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AN EARTH POEM 

AND OTHER POEMS 



BY 

GERDA DALLIBA 



WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY 

EDWIN MARKHAM 



G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

NEW YORK AND LONDON 

Hbe Ikniclterbocliei: ptees 

1908 



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lUiHARY of CONi.-5'iESS' 
I wo Copies rtet»- . -^ 

SEP 9 , )y^» 

^^ i,r-r ■■» » ^^ i '"' * ■■■ I m il ' ' ' » 



Copyright, 1908 

BY 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Ube ftnfckerboclier Press, l^ew ISorli 



^0 
Louise Chandler Moulton 

one of the noble women who influence the letters and 
verse of new england, this book is 
gratefully dedicated 



Contents 



PAGE 



AN EARTH POEM : 

I. Children of Sod, Morning .... $ 

(Dealing with Social Conditions.) 

II. Children of Air, Noon .... 64 
(Dealing with Man's Personal Affections 
and Emotional Life.) 

III. Children of Sun, Night .... 104 
(Dealing with Man's Deism or Religious 
Tendencies.) 

SONNETS : 

A Sonnet ........ 173 

The Woman of Heaven, etc. . . . .174 

Sonnet ......... 175 

Sleep 176 

Sonnet . . . .. . . . .177 

Disillusionment 178 

Unselfishness 179 

Some Music 180 

V 



VI 



Contents 



Tyranny 
Dead Day . 
Sonnet 

ViDHATA 

Afar . 

Sonnet 

Complex Life 

Sonnet 

Pause 

A Palace upon Sands 

Sonnet 

Sonnet 

Futile Time 

Love Older 

The Stars . 

Sonnet 

My Kakimono 

Sonnet 

Delirium 

At Last 

Thy Memory 

A Skull 

Night 

Conventionality 



182 

183 
184 

185 
186 
187 
188 
189 
190 
191 
192 

193 
194 

195 
196 

197 

198 

199 

200 
201 
202 
203 
204 



Contents 



vu 



Nature 






PAGE 


Together . 






► 206 


Sonnet 






207 


Sonnet 






208 


Sonnet 






209 


Life's Feast 






210 


Heredity 






211 


Superman . 






212 


The Future 






213 


Natural Progress 




214 


My Cry .... 




218 


OTHER POEMS WITH SONNETS : 




The Makers of To-morrows . . . , 


221 


Brotherhood of Nations . . . . . 


226 


Life ......... 


231 


Lines . . . . . 


2?>?> 


Struggle ........ 


234 


Peace ........ 


236 


The Song of the Dead on the Battlefield . 


243 


The Gulf Stream ...... 


247 


Yearning ........ 


258 


The Quaint Heart of the Nightingale 


259 


Sympathy ........ 


260 


The New Genesis 


. 


• . 


265 



VIU 



Contents 



An Incense Song 

Ascending Love . 

A Southern Island 

A Southern Scene 

The Transformation 

Lines . 

The Little Scar 

Acheon 

Towards the Stars 

The Whirling Atom 

To a Child . 

Ode to Youth 

Our Desire 

Thou Standest Not 

The White Flower 

Lines . 

A Greek Lament 

Lines . 

A Dawn Song 

Nirvana 

In Memoriam 



PAGE 
266 

274 
278 
280 

288 
290 
294 
299 

307 
311 

313 
315 
317 
318 

319 
321 



A Word of Introduction 

LJ ERE is a book that seems to me to have touches 
-■•■*■ of the wild beauty which we have all agreed 
to call poetic genius. The strict craftsman will per- 
haps find blemishes and obscurities in the structure 
of these poems ; but he will also find those rarities 
of thought and feeling that will be a delight. There 
is a rift of genius in this ledge of song; and genius 
is so rare and precious a thing that, wherever found, 
it should call out gratitude and not grumbling. 

In "An Earth Poem," Gerda Dalliba sets forth 
in lyric beat her passionate thoughts about man and 
his long eons of evolution. Here life is touched in 
its vaster origins and issues. In the first part 
(''Children of Sod") man is seen in his mere sense- 
himger and earth-wrestle. In the second part 
("Children of Air") man begins to wonder over life 
and to send his restless heart across the stars. But 
in the last part ("Children of Sun") man dreams of 
the long purpose of God and fares forth in daring ad- 
ventures of the Spirit. It is a strange poem that 
voices the unceasing flux of life. With her usual 



IX 



X A Word of Introduction 

daring of thought and phrase, the poet has at- 
tempted in this dithyrambic to give to science the 
wings of song, and to milestone the march of man 
from cave-dweller up to glowing seraph. Let me 
tear out of the pages a few of the lines. 

Dead people hindered from, their will and goal, 
Leaving their silence as a cry to God. 

Earth's breasts are built upon by steel and mail, 
Her mouth is gullied with the Spit of Life. 

Pinnacled endeavour 

Such as praise 

The sky with palaces and Earth with flaunt 

Of large luxuriant kingdoms hiding want. 

Only an hour to thrill and to be mad ! 

Be mad and free! 

With feet that will move toward some love like mine. 

Walking faint ether with my own soul's sound; 

Then from our shrouds of ground, 

Perhaps to be burnt with some torch 

Of a woman's streaming hair. 

This sonnet shows the unusual quality that tinges 
all of the work of Gerda Dalliba: 

I would be some vast, dead, gold sonneteer 
Who heralds forth the crocus and the rose; 
Or down the high mid-passage of the year 
Blows blasts for empires that seek repose; 



A Word of Introduction xi 

Or with the fall my latest period close ; 
Or as Apollo with gigantic cheer; 
Or sadly hymn of death by blighting foes; 
Or tell how last sun's rays shall disappear. 

But all the time, my verse goes out to seek 
Rivers that gently wander through the plains, 
And with sleek winds sing the disturbless trees! 
With accidental butterflies full meek, 
Whose wing before the least of purpose wanes, 
Or but go humming with the summer bees ! 

Here is the sextet of another sonnet — a rnystic 
cry of the heart: 

Yet, sometimes in the syllabance of night 

I catch an echo that is not mine own — 

A parched long cry from some forgotten pain. 

Hush! it may be my heart's voice void of tone, 

Or a mute whisper from a life of light 

Led in the past, that may not come again! 

This quatrain from another sonnet whispers of 
the old mystery of our fate: 

Who threw the dust into the blind one's eyes? 
Was it the Sandwoman near the shoals of Time 
From her grey hag, that held with must and grime 
The grains' compassion and the grim surmise ? 

We find a memorable naivete and wildness in 
the lines "To a Child": 



xii A Word of Introduction 

O tender One, not ready yet to climb 

The ways of chance, scarcely so strong to creep. . . . 

Flaunt all the angels with their clumsy wings: 

Take for thy rattle earth and all its bells! 

Chew on the world, and for thy rubber rings 

Have thou the endless heavens and their hells! 

Take for thy playfellow a piece of space. 

And let man, as thy elder brother, run 

Playing for thee his game of tag and race. 

With thy rebounding ball, which is the sun! 

These lines might have been written by Shake- 
spere's child: 

Thy hapless eyes, 

Happy in their imprintment of thy dreams; 

Thy brow the whitened beach for thought's loose tide; 

Thy cheeks a moor of berries, brown and red. 

The bigness of Gerda Dalliba's concepts (some- 
times dim in their outline) may be seen in her 
tumultuous poem, ''The Gulf Stream." She cries 
to the ocean: 

O sea ! — 

Thou dost reach like a serpent, and bury the swan necks of 

Peninsulas, where 
The Isthmuses lie in thy lair! 

But the noble vistas of this poet's thought are 
also seen in the historic sweep of her surging poem 



A Word of Introduction xlii 

*' Peace. " Here we also discover the prodigality 
of her images and the affluence of her poetic fantasy. 
The wide sympathies and affections of the poet 
come welling up in her last poem in the volume — 
the poem in memory of Grieg. There is a wildness 
in these sobbing chords: 

To-night the violins around the world, 

Played on by hands that seek to find joy's key, 

Are touched with sadness down the four long strings. 

Known or unknown there comes the wail of wings. 

The resting bows unrosined send a plea. . . . 

If the fastidious reader thinks that there is scarce 
a page of the book without its verbal fault, let me 
cheer him with the fact that there is scarce a page 
without its fresh phrases, its striking figures. Here 
are a few of these felicities: 

How far is Heaven on a day in spring? 

I hear a trumpet call across the sea, 
A grey sound-lily breaking on a lea. 

The oriole swings above a grave 
And chirps as wilhngly above a cross, 
As if young lovers plighted. 

The bee 

That now for ever hums, 

Its gold feet set in Heaven's cups of chance, 



xlv A Word of Introduction 

Its wings adrift in unseen air, like drums 
Beating some unheard rhythm, small and free. 

Thy name is Struggle! morn and noon and late 
Thou castest thy dim will from void to void. 
And in thy giant arm the little world 
Nestles to thee in littleness and grief. 

The lines I have quoted show the wild energy of 
this poet's work. But even better work will yet 
come from the pen of this brilliant woman; for 
she has imagination, colour, fire — and youth! 

Edwin Markham. 

New York City, 1908. 



AN EARTH POEM 



An Earth Poem and Other Poems 



Preface to An Earth Poem 

THE intent of this necessarily abstract and lyric poem is to 
express in words Man's needs, capabilities, and progress, 
accepting as a premise that, generally speaking his course has 
been one tending from the mere materialism of Nature to 
a more refined and spiritual outlook, as is the case with 
an individual turning from childhood's idealistic pantheism 
through the material of fact and divergent emotions towards 
the necessity of a formulated Deism, or the slow progression 
of the Mass by the care of civilisation and cultivation to a 
penetrating view of essential needs. 

As it has seemed advisable to treat such an idea through 
a purely symbolic form I have divided this poem into three 
sections, viz: I. "Children of Sod," representing Man's first 
impulse which is material including a few of the cries of 
Socialism. II. "Children of Air," or a fantasy of personal 
affection for the presentation of Man's emotional and in- 
tellectual attitude with regard to his finite existence; and in 
III. " Children of Sun," making the daring assumption of some 
undefined purpose or God, using the sun purely as representing 
the vital unearth-bound seeking of the Spirit. 

In these three sections I have prefixed the words Morning, 



2 Preface to An Earth Poem 

Noon, and Night, to unite the whole effort into the cohesive 
imagery of a day. Using the term Sun with Night has been 
intentional as I expressly desired to represent the passing 
on of the Spirit; also have I wished by the term Air in the 
Noon to express the evanescent and temporary quality of 
', man's relationships in life; while the term Sod has its natural 
fundamentary acceptance in what is most material. 

In the limited space, owing to my own lack of knowledge 
I must ask the reader's pardon for such lapses in continuity 
and such defaults in argument as have occurred, hoping only 
therein to have suggested a few too pregnant facts and the 
fragmentary notion of an Ideal. 



I. Children of Sod. 
II. Children of Air. 
III. Children of Sun. 



Children of Sod 

(morning) 

"Wait for the word is ever for the world!" — 

I saw gigantic on the nether sphere 

When to my eyes, 

Heaven and all the skies 

Bathed in sleep's atmosphere 

Were very near, 

The mute Earth sitting in her wont disguise, 

And through the fragrant passages of clouds, 

That decked the wonder, human, dense, and wise, 

And past the ways of stars and rolling shrouds 

The vapours rise. 

And then as through my tears 

The Life, that on this Earth takes his sojourn, 

And while I feigned to turn 

Back from the sight again to Paradise 

Where the lamps burn to make oblivion clear — 

I could not go, but stayed as still in fear 

To see which first, the Earth or Heaven would disappear. 

But Heaven to me, because I was of clay 
And looked upon the mortal and the dear 
And saw the fiercer glories disappear 
And something of the brightness pass away 

5 



6 An Earth Poem 

As phantoms through the cloud reach of the dawn 

Where the winds blew to spread the night astray, 

As a black peacock for this ivory swan — 

O'er which the gold sun seemed to bend and pray, 

And I put my hot hands through sodding much 

And strove with touch 

To sanctify the day. 

Then in the sky, as if the thorn of birth, 

Still lingered on the young dawn's saffron rose — 

I saw faint hills, the children of the Earth 

When long ago it was with cloud and sea 

She held communion, and as such still grows 

One in the morning sun's intensity 

They made the gateway for my bodied soul, 

Through which descending knew I not the bars — 

The hills, mirroring the lost realms to me. 

The patient lovers of the ancient stars. 

Keeping their moody watch eternally — 

Dead people hindered from their will and goal, 

Leaving their silence as a cry to God, 

Then suddenly there came and walked abroad 

A million sunbeams, chattering to the lea. 

Life, most vital mistress of our souls, 
Finding at last thy reign in living tears 
Have comfort on the great maternal Earth 
Where is spread regal birth. 

Above me and about me in the dawn 

1 felt the succour of a homeward heart. 
The dimnesses of Heaven were withdrawn, 
Slowly around the circuit of her breast, 



Children of Sod 

A many-life like mine passed up and on, 

Out from the sudden breaking of unrest, 

The wind swang all the grasses of the years 

To murmur, and the spring filled trees seemed bells 

Upturned with tremulous greeting to the dome. 

Her roof now only, the large heart that swells 

The stems of many blossoms to their blooms ! 

The day that was pre-natal to the hills. 

Looked on me, and as a God's bosom fills 

The spaces in his life which makes them home, 

I peopled void with the Earth's peopled tombs 

And with her living blessings went apart ! 

A little space the night wakes in the dark, 

As a child waits the grea.t eternal sleep — 

I paused, the pageants splendour went so deep 

Of light, mooring her barque where seas are fair 

Red and more red, as if to stain the rose 

Vernal as if the Earth itself be lost 

In its eclipse, till on her breast, O hark! 

A bird as if its throat with song were crossed 

Woke in a wonder, making light repose 

In floods of passionate yellow through the air. 

Children of Sod 

Look up 

Here is your Earth I 

Look round, here is your Earth, your Earth and Sea! 

And Wind convulsive, going into space, 

And Sun, not high up in the lambent air 

But here, O here, in globules on the pod! 

The stem of bliss has given to his cup 

Faint moisture, breathless dews, the tears of birth, 



8 An Earth Poem 

And burning filmy sands, and gatherous clay 

That moulds and climbs, and seems to intertwine 

Like threads of lace 

For ye ! 

What will ye make of day? 

What will ye have from all these things of growth? 

Ye are their snare, 

Ye make them, guide them into beings, take 

Their deaths from them, now here, now everywhere 

Their sweet surrender make 

Your own, exaltant, loth. 

As if hunger somehow were a sweet 

The mouths of things about me brought forth song, 

Piercing the sadness of the rounded sky 

Yellow, dim, and long, 

The notes as pollen round the hushed winds' feet — • 

Blown from gentle lilies near the ground. 

Calyxed lilies of a dewy dye 

Rose, and then merged their being into sound. 

Yet was I hungry for the woe and weal 

To feel, to feel! 

And bring myself but quiet of the wound — 

Hungry to die, if but to die were sound — 

And all around. 

The horn of death, the bleeding serpent wind 

If but to find . 

But wait, for there is stir 

Through the far hills it comes. 

From silenced unaverred mysteriarchial domes 

Unseen, yet fair. 



Children of Sod 

Green kind leaves sweet 

That swing about my head 

And berry carpet 'neath my feet 

All red! 

Good Mother Earth, 

The rich spill of thy womb 

Is plenteous in grove and fruit and bloom, 

As if thou wouldst thyself the barrier keep 

Between the high, the brave. 

The immortal Dome — 

Except, save when upon thy breast, 

Lies sleep 

Sucking at milk of thy forgotten moon. 

Taking thy children from thy regal arm 

Unwotting of thy harm — 

Unto a little quietness of rest — 

As when the grass with dew is interspersed. 

And sphered are all the drops of dew that weep 

Upon the icy hill top, ice girt steep, 

And sunken bay — 

And myriad flowing wave. 

As their environs change with daw^n for day 

So we at birth. 

Hunger for whence we were returned to thee, 

And very soon. 

Our eyes grow heavy with a light immersed 

In radiations for our own far home. 

Dim night aloft 

In his most spacial car 

Rides around the circuit kernel of each star 

As rides around the sheep the brown night jar! — ■ 

And lo, a feel of evanescence thrills 



lo An Earth Poem 

The mighty sconture of the waiting hills — 

He passes in each sphere 

Whose sunned gate 

Grows black at his approach with shadows soft 

As if about him sate 

Kingdoms of Chaos, learning how to wait, 

But yet, as in the flower a faint perfume 

Circles the sightless beauty of its bloom 

Some nether thought of furtherest morn to sin. 

Souls wait upon the break, where souls begin. 

Where sleep lies watching as a brother-tear 

About their fleshly bodies' unused bier. 

And lo, as he doth bend her form to win 

He steals us blind without our casual wills, 

• — An odour which the soul of life distils — 

Distils us till again, a boon on thee. 

We fall a casual mutability. 

Lo Earth, as thou dost hire 

From Heaven the seed, the growth, the pod, 

Thou hirest us — The Children of thy Sod! 

And our desire: 

I hungered and was fed, 

I yearned 

And slept, 

Marking the seasons' gourd, whereon was swept 

The brackened bed 

Laid rushwise on the mountain. 

In the fields. 

On beach sands, or in deserts for my head. 

For unto Earth I was most closely wed 

Most tirefully wed — and wed alone ! 



Children of Sod ii 

It seemed almost I turned 

And was of stone ; 

For my lost voice 

I haunted pool and fountain; 

And my eyes' light I sought to blind at even 

In friendly light, as if then must the skies 

Hold answering orbs to mine 

From quiet Heaven. 

Through arrases and under bush of tree, 

To dream upon a curved mouth like mine own 

Much gazed I at the faint arch of the moon ; 

And sought by this, and subtle imagery 

Combining red acacias with her shape, 

To form a human mouth 

Where might escape 

A kiss, a word, 

To solace my despair 

When winds were fragrant in the summer air, 

But nothing answered me, 

And nothing stirred — 

Save growth in her eternal work and swoon 

Most like a nun beside a constant loom 

Of birth and tomb ! 

Naught made me then rejoice — 

I but endured the spirit's will, that yields 

The maiden springs, that travelled from the South 

With bird and after promises of bliss. 

Then through the heart there ran as on a string. 
The wayward promise half remembering — 
That naught was alien to the fledgling brood. 
That circles in the pool ran round a ring 



12 An Earth Poem 

As twined horizons clustered to the down, 

That many berry bunches made a crown, 

That water streams on oceans' hands were laid. 

That trees re-echoed in a lighted shade, 

And moth should measure filmy wing with wing, 

And bird on bird 

As husbanding a wife, 

Was mutably heard, 

Till all averred, 

That Touch was Life — ! 

That brotherhood was king — ! 

In this sequestered world o'er solitude — ! 



Yet must I wait ; 
For in my heart not yet 
Could I the skies entirely forget — 
Whose inner vault kept its serene estate, 
A balsam and a balm — 
By disagreeing shifts. 
By freedom's calm. 
And proffered gifts. 
As rain before the seed 
Came ere the need 

Where mighty pulses spake their Master's will- 
To answering pulses in the midnight still — 
Lest he should wake, and long, and find no fill,- 
Lest that grave moment which doth integrate 
The particles of Time 
Which ever climb, 
Should rise, and wake. 
The slumber keeping harmony, and break 



Children of Sod 13 

The spell provided to the insensate — 

Or the At Once should famish and grow chill. 

Therefore I kept the leisure of the boon, 
Waiting its longing to descend and be 
A longing unto me — 
For soon, O soon, 

Should come the wayward Children of the Sod — 
Traversing hidden paths of destiny, 
Where the dawn mists across the hills had trod — 
Unbind my single chain and let me free! 

And now, a gladness swept into the birds' free song of bud 
and pod. 

There are two ways to draw beatitude — 

Yielding of self, or straining to its mood, 

Yet all is yieldment to the consecrate. 

When the Sod Children woke, I knew, I knew! — 

I had not wronged their birth, 

And that they came, 

When their own souls inherited such flame. 

As from their fires of being brought blood rife 

Pentless and strong like mine — 

Of which as yet 

I could not fathom, 

Of a purpose set 

In struggle ; as if either side of life 

Was placed in giant hands a protoplasm 

Continually disturbed. 

From whence did flow 

The stream of being converged there, and herbed, 

And then left in my hands the tenure of its strife — • 



14 An Earth Poem 

As if my burden pulse to obligate 

With time and rue — 

And for myself with weight of it to grow 

To earth, 

Groping as alien for the closed divine. 

And yet they come — 

My voice seems to be dumb, 

The Rose of Form 

Has closed the latest petals to her heart — 

The Children of the Sod arise 

And part. 

Then muttered 

The storm 

Of wind, which from the Heaven blows 

To train the body to its sacrifice ! — 

As in the evening cullers of the grape 

Who twine the vine. 

The while they steal from it the globes of wine, 

So use the spirits this immortal shape ! 

So graft they here Contagion from Repose! 

First — One, I saw at evening as he lay 

On tarnished rim of bay, 

From out his shape as from an ivory close 

His young faint spirit fluttered; 

Then there came 

A sea girt wave upon his cheeks like flame 

And he arose, 

Remembered how such drowsy weariness 

As then beset him 

He himself had chose 

The weight of body with its chain and stress 



Children of Sod 15 

And went away, as if he should depart. 
Then heard I, One, 
Whereon 

The mountains stra}^ 
The pines and the white sheep, 
CalHng as if from sleep 
A gentle plaint 
Unutterably deep, 
And through the dim 

It seemed as if the voice that gave it, faint. 
As odour of the pine 
Must moor itself, again 
In realms of lesser pain. 

For from no human mouth could come divine 
Save from the gates of being, such a strain; 
And many times, frail breaths 
Did intervene 
With silence, 

Many times did forms appear 
To lose themselves again in shadowy screen, 
As if Life were the harmony of deaths — 
While all the Earth in one glad jubilee 
Rose into sound and colour, as to call 
The footsteps back to wander in her hall, 
The stranger form upon her bosom free — 
To wander and to feast 
As bird and beast 
From her bronze body here ! 
The Mother, knows no violence 
But offers in the sacredness of troth 
To Life, and Growth, 
From her twin bosoms stained as berries red 



1 6 An Earth Poem 

The milk of love — 

While the broad heavens, shed 

Their dews and sunlights on her from above! 

Ah! here in this warm meet, 

Unsundered from the skies, awake and be 

Not incomplete, 

Since yearning turns 

To angelise her face, 

And here, still burns 

The grosser matter round the sacred shrine, 

Where votive fires, set beneath the eyes 

The lit lamp of the heart, 

That such incense, 

Goes up to the immense 

As there doth solemnise, 

Man's marriage and embrace. 

To childbirth plotting for heredity — 

Making Earth and kindred twine 

With chance and space. 

With devious spells of art, 

A retrospect of ordinated grace! 

The trees are bells, 

O let their melody 

Sing loudly heavenward with tune and spells 

Of changure, here! 

And let the mockery 

As doth the year 

Garnished with seed and fruit, stability 

Make wide the horn of plenty through the land!- 

And spread the misty breathings of the clod 



Children of Sod 17 

To tone! 

Children of brain and hand 

Of joy and moan, 

Till songs like birds be lifted from the strand, 

Children of Sod — 

To clamber the unknown. 

Yet one I hear among ye wake alarm 

So slightly first, as if at evenings' gloom, 

The laced wings of a moth fell on its tomb, 

Or puerile sounding of a famished harm 

That soon must die 

Upon its mother's arm. 

Since Earth is Joy, and Earth is Motherhood, 

And all the proved stars shine above the world, 

What wouldst thou more? 

What more would have the brood? 

What more would they have held? 

Has one drop of the ocean lost its shore? 

Or petal closed at night that cannot wake 

By transmigration into change of growth? 

Or autumn winds unwebbed a too late nest? 

Or other law, save glad futility 

That wastes to make 

Been broken? 

Crown on Crown, 

And Soul on Soul, they pour across the down — ■ 

These later children into Life's device — 

These Children of the Sod, to build and use 

Nature and clay, with starry sky girt eye 

Accustomed now to choose 

Strife, habitudes, 



1 8 An Earth Poem 

Environment, and rest, 

Sacrifice, 

Light, gatherings together, solitudes, 

Sign, token 

Of day and night — from crimsoned east and west — 

Of omnipresent air, and circling sea. 

Of Time, and Tide, and pause 

Of Cause 

Making insensate laws 

Of constant energy now fain, now loath, 

Causing reverberation whose degree 

Gives unto Life its immortality ! 

What echo small 

Of pain runs down the long frequented hall 

To challenge thought 

With link of mystery? 

Is there a change in changure, 

A new garb worn by breed of known entity? 

Or milk of mouth with other substance caught ? 

Nay, 

Naught could then endure 

A shrinkage of least bliss. 

The Children of the Sod, by night and day 

Are drawn down — 

And from the vast and hierarchical crown 

Choose Earth to kiss 

For their entirety. 

They lift the loadstone, then upon their shoulders high 

And sing 

The paean of the Touch ! 

Their kingdom grows 



Children of Sod 19 

Folded more close the petal of their rose. 

The summers pass, the winters are on wing 

To pass the southern fire back to spring, 

It is too much ! — 

The mind turns on itself, 

A wasp doth sting 

A useless flower, 

A wanton bat doth crush 

A ray of moonlight on the evening turf, 

A human cognisance of need 

Has spread 

Disaster through the breed, 

The while the horn of plenty comes to shed 

Its benediction, 

And the ground refulgent is with summers' nutriment. 

One has put foot on pelf, 

Has stolen from another, 

Though all the sky is pure of dye. 

Though the great Mother 

Her ritual of harvest doth augment. 

From stretch to stretch of surf 

No leisure no omission. 

Necessitates the friction. 

Save, from the Mind is born — 

There grew this thorn! 

This strange low sorrow in the happy morn! 

This pain in sound, and vision. 

This low call in the hour. 

Amid the flush! — 

Is not the Mind, also a power? 
A grower amid growth? 



20 An Earth Poem 

A parasite that calls itself a god ? 

O Children of the sunburnt Sod, 

Ye were her latest visibility, 

Waited for and beheld 

A louder seed, from which all small seeds cower, 

Should ye not see? 

Should ye not have your fruit, 

Wherewith to weld, 

An outgrowth from the tangle of the root? 

A great inherent possibility 

For self dominion? 

The flower has its leaf. 

The bird its pinion, 

A subtle will, formed of the Earth and Air 

Has claimed for all Life fair 

A portioned climax and a mastery 1 — ■ 

Of kind to kind. 

From brood to brood, 

For birth and food. 

For birth and breed. 

Did not the flower break 

For its own sake 

The willing seed? 

The fledgling of the eagle learn to soar 

And rest no more 

Above the nested mother, where his wings 

Should droop and fail? — 

Or slow song be content because there sings 

One parent bird, 

The while young throats grow strong 

With music which its primal impulse stirred, 

Sweet — long — ? 



Children of Sod 21 

Or shall this pale, 

This sin, then moan itself to utter grief, 

Or for revenge the naked hours go shorn by palsied age and loath ? 

Or, shall the Mind 

Among the mourning children have content 

To remain blind — 

Inconsequent — 

Hid from the upward splendours of the world? 

Wan Sin, 

Forgive 

All those who live! — 

And who would let thy veins 

Begin 

To bleed forth pith on their circumfering way. 

Or should gainsay 

Thy pallid death to nothingness; 

Or round about thee poisoned ivys twine 

Which run 

In a contagion. 

As doth breathe forth the green pith of a storm 

In lightning from the Sun ! 

Let soft evasion 

Since Pity has the wisdom to be kind 

Rather bind up the wounds of even Sin — 

Forget, and as within 

Joy is reborn 

With lack of meditation, 

Compress the sting, the vampire and the thorn, 

The first but not unconquerable pains 

Bring from their form 

The healer of negation; 



22 An Earth Poem 

For see, the Mind 

Which wounds itself may bless, 

And yield a consecration to its shrine! 

The Children of the Sod gather, forget 

The unaccustomed fret, 

Their minds repured b}^ habit of large bliss 

Can this 

Remeasure 

And reheal. 

For while the nourishment of woe and weal 

Be planted in the Sense 'sidereal pleasure. 

And need shall rest within Earth's nutriment 

It will be sent. 

Be drawn to the valley and the field ; 

As to the sea a vacancy is given 

Where it may weave its vapours. 

As atmospheric snows the mountain's crests have driven, 

To merge and mingle with the cloud that tapers 

Over the height. 

As penetrateless dark is cloak for night. 

As form the flowers, pre-organic scent 

Growth shall co-ordinate with spill of flesh 

And nature to it yield 

Her pliant hands as shapers 

Till more red 

The berry in its mesh, 

And more the grain doth tip 

The reach of land to draw the sky at lip, 

As if the very heavens had bent and kneeled 

In interchangel wild 

Beside the Earth, the Mother to their Child! 



Children of Sod 23 



The one of pelf 

Could draw not Nature's generosity, 

Nor make a cry of want 

Save in himself 

At first. 

Yet all the Children took one chosen haunt, 

Deserted plenty, 

Chose frugality 

For the last hunger's quenchment, 

Yearned, grew warm 

With terminalless fire, 

Sought commune as a mountain herd in storm 

Or swarm of bees that underneath the sun 

Still cluster into one, 

For their desire 

Was as a flower's thirst 

For the dew's passioned intergality, 

The scarlet blood of Heaven's royalty, 

For purposes the same through entity 

Found here their trenchment. 

Made their circle fine 

As visionless casualities combine 

The splendid far hills left to breed the kine. 

Then first the Mother dreamt of solitude— 
That alien lands through centuries must wait 
For the oncoming of her knowledged kin, 
Still for her long predestined purpose sate 
Watching the four great cleavures of her wind 
Till in the lure of the titanic Mind 
Swept from the gates of past heredity 
Should come the Children of the Sod with sin 



24 An Earth Poem 

Ringing the land and sea 

With the tumultuous cry of their predestiny! 

And while the stellar poles 

Should become populate 

By the migrate, 

With breath grown spiritual, as if the souls 

Breathed of celestial vapours perforate, 

The Sun which now above her sphere still rolls 

Should slay her life when his rays terminate, 

And should therewith fall heaven on the brood. 

For watch, from skies the great ancestral Mind 

Born for a purpose wreaths the purpose more, 

Too sensitised at last 

The recreate becomes creative, 

Tangles upon itself. 

Gathers not only from its harvest pelf 

But many forms of weird transisity. 

Driving the body on to reinstate 

The quickened motion of its wa3rward kind, 

Beating the sunlight on an alien shore. 

Driving more folk before its pinions fast 

As nears the Eagle the sequestered Dove, 

Repopulating laughter, light, and love, 

Till from the crowds fresh smaller crowds disperse 

To the Sod Children's Children's Universe, 

Who rehearse 

The parent trial in echo 

Till the slow 

Procession overrides in strength the loss, 

As unto gods a ritual is paid 

For Growth by Life, 



Children of Sod 25 

For Entity by pain, 

And Earth in her fierce bliss again doth strain 

To live 

The fire through her hands that sacrifice. 

More shores that wake beside the tidal sea 

The pressure of the wandering feet now cross, 

More berries red in Southern lands grow rife 

To feed the lips which unto them are laid. 

Upon fresh roots the foster children wait 

To watch the rose in the horizons rise. 

Yet what is this, that makes the land swept clay 

Lend to these feet their all accustomed way, 

Is it a sudden yieldment? 

Or can the lesser matter, Mind gainsay? 

Or was the plotting with the dadeal stars 

More recompense to Earth for Motherhood 

Than for her first young brood ? — 

Plotting upon her bosom e'en for scars? 

For here they dig long wells of stagnant floats 

In inland mere 

To draw pure water with, and one may hear 

A voice from a stone crevice set so high 

As to regard the blue sweet orifice, 

This by the Mind, all this, 

Spotting each new born-child with will, to see 

Temples to Use that shall not pass away ; 

Now a huge city hurtles on a bay, 

A clan has pitched its tent athwart the wave 

And sails it with frail boats. 

While all the lea 

Is cobwebbed into huts 



26 An Earth Poem 

Where he may save, 

His nightly rest from storms in caves and juts 

Of midnight oceans nigh. 

Nature! behold 

Thy child becomes thy active minister! 

Upon his will 

Thy sterile grafture's innermost intent, 

He would aver 

That thou art more than thou, 

Of stronger mould, 

He would incent 

Thy innermost endeavours with his skill, 

Till passing all thy reproductive years 

Which do thyself fulfil 

With all his pregnant possibility, 

Thou shalt become imbued and reinfused 

Till the next laws, 

— ^The laws of the Progression and the Cause, — 

Shall slowly by a gradual fret and change 

Increase thy largeness, suppleize thy range 

By evolution strange. 

Till thou shalt place, 

Within the bowl of motion thy bronze brow, 

Sinking in seas of tears 

Where night on climbing ocean builds her biers- 

Thou most engendered, thou most freely used 

Shalt kneel and hide thy devenustated face! 

Wreath of the Mind, 

Thou art most strangely set, , 

As thee I find 



Children of Sod 27 

On forehead of the Earth, 

On her red breasts 

Thou twinest thy way of spotted berries red, 

That seems to be thy heart — 

While into wreaths of rests, 

Of tangled smoke, 

Thy ultimate being riseth, 

As if to crown almost the frequent air. 

Yet not yet! 

Thou but Greatest, low 

On the grave sod which gave to thee thy birth 

Manifestations of thy later creed, 

Building thyself for comfort born of need, 

Till need grows larger in her wanton way 

Which thou by pelf didst cherish 

To gainsay 

The ground which would all nourish ; 

The while thy bed 

Was made of grasses fair 

Such, as thy temples pleasantly re woke. 

And now thou, to whom thyself these things 

Must mend, for thy reprieve despiseth 

Far stranger nooks, 

Mute wings 

Must start, 

For chilled limbs house of shelter where to lie 

In winter nights, building fires within 

The hearthstone piled with wooded shackles thin, 

Must plant thy geld thereby, 

Beside material brooks 

Lest haunt of food be distanced from the kin, 

Thus art thou chained to labour, and still more 



28 An Earth Poem 

Thou chooseth men to work about thy door, 

And keep thy hearthstone clean, 

Thou ownst thyself! 

This is the uttermost conceit of pelf : 

Or else, thou fat, shalt pay him who is lean, 

To work at growth, or to resow thy pod. 

O Children of the Sod, 

Gaze on such lights as still above ye lean, 

And see between your villages the green 

Of verdant hills and far horizon's sky, 

This is the long procession of the Mind. 

For self enlargement to become unkind, 

Take heed — • 

Ye multiply 

The outward signs by close of inner eye. 

Do not become all blind! 

For ye must have increase, in other form 

Although Injustice sweep 

His talisman of storm 

Around the moist dews which incessant weep ! 

Behold your monument, strange, unused, sweet 

All things, all outward show, 

Even all greed. 

All pomp in chain. 

Are for your own mentality 

Your brain — 

All graftings come to range them on this meet 

For here it was ye thirsted for your gain, 

And here by effort and heredity 

And then 

By strength of labour and in labour pain 

What ye desired most has come to be — 



Children of Sod 29 

O that ye were more wise ! — • 

From this fair temple looked upon the skies 

Where Evolution, by a stranger cross 

Shall repay doubt and loss. 

To him laid waste within the wilderness 

Shall most confess. 

But are ye not regenerated free? 

Shall ye not with a faster motion swing 

In upper faster Air the wound and sting 

Till vacant soul shall be its harbouring? 

Yet watching on the ground 

Ye revel sight and sound: 

The while the rivers flow 

By cities, and by towns, and blandishment of men! 

O scarlet profanations, 

That lie across the main! 

Like crimson flowers, and fruit of the great brain, 

Your names are Nations! 

And, amid the fane 

Hurtle the Children of the Sod again ! 

The gathered stars look down 

On the Earth's crown. 

Half thorn, half petal, half desire, half pain. 

Children of Sod look up, 

Here is your Earth! 

Here is your Air! 

And here your World 

Squat like a mammoth Urchin of the Sea, 

Congealing selves to selves continuously! 



30 An Earth Poem 

A monstrel of a hybrid breed, 

Red, bleared, 

Contagious, omnipresent, sightless, torn 

Of molecular cells collateral! 

Long vampire contagions sting the rose of morn, 

Its petals heave and weld, 

Now amid flames the ghost of fire stalks. 

Earth's breasts are built upon by steel and mail. 

Her mouth is gullied with the Spit of Life 

As if by foes. 

Yet frail 

Still grows the Evil that the hearts assail, 

And pelf remet by putrefaction here 

Recalls alone his solitary tear. 

Progress, with perturbations, learns to walk — 

Children seize hours between death and birth — 

All labyrinthed and canyoned is the hall — 

Where trembling grew the seed — 

Within its cup 

Import, the will most feared 

Lies in his lair, 

Whose she- wolf has become predestined strife, 

At whose lean udders sucks the cub of woes. 

Habitude or habiliment 
Wherein 

Existence's filiment 
With din 
Of noisy hands 
Wanders upon the lands. 
Is shifted, but is left, 
While more and more. 



Children of Sod 31 

Contagious life circles the land and shore, 

Shifting its bearings into its degree 

Has cleft 

Its pageant out of form, to be 

One circumstance 

With ever gain, still riding in advance, 

And ever pain riding across the Mind, 

And ever that which ever rides behind. 

And ever loss for those who fall by chance 

Beneath the gain's oppressing heavy feet. 

Run to the coveted and tortuous meet 

That lies beyond the region of the storm 

Where shoulders halt and life takes on fresh form. 

Slow Need, that lies an underpulse between 

Genesis and the stars. 

Not yet, thy fill 

Has fallen from Man's bounteous cup of will; 

Progression, as too fast a snail has crawled 

Towards spiritual bars, 

And left thee still 

Waiting beside a portal and a screen. 

Thou Socialism, on whom now 

Men called 

Men call ! 

Thou Right! O thou 

Replenishment of growth for all! 

To find out food, was easy to attain 

By scavenger of the material plain. 

Then stroke the rich impetuous for the Sun 

Where faster gains o'er run 

The aperturing Heaven of his Mind, 



32 An Earth Poem 

But chide him not, that therewith he did go, 

For he, nor left behind 

Struggle nor rue 

In his departure hence. 

He did but recommence 

The ground strife in the air of sterner blue, 

And battled on to violent kingdoms raise, 

As if his wealth in higher state before 

Of pinnacled endeavour 

Such as praise 

The sky with palaces and the Earth with flaunt 

Of large luxuriant kingdoms' hiding want. 

Nor all the purpled shrouding of the King 

Could hide the just, the preordained sting. 

The Earth is kind, 

She has no will to taunt, 

Nor Hierarchies can obscure the Spring, 

Nor Monarchy her sovereign summer daunt ! 

Each year, she takes to breast her own changeling. 

No use, or over use makes sterile clod, and fret 

Entirely as yet. 

Nor shall until 

A riper fruit shall fall for Man within 

Her long anticipated deathly thrill, 

Although much tenanted the marshes bright and dull. 

The grove, and hill, 

The meadow, and the harbour by the sea. 

She still hath room for ye! 

Below her breast 

Her loins lie long, and full. 

And they who came upon her bosom first 

Knew hunger and knew thirst; 



Children of Sod 33 

And, though this answers not 

The lot— 

And the re-urged plea, — 

We win — 

Have patience, for the quest 

Which for so long has been, so long confessed — 

Life, comes upon the clue of entity, 

Prepared his chamber for the waiting guest, 

The later Child of Sod shall have his share. 

Nor disproportioned shall become his fare. 

The first sons' turn even without their will 

Whose unseen law guides them to make again 

For ye such labour as was theirs — to till 

The harvest, and be reapers of the grain — 

Ye shall have all made plain! 

Till ye their ground of Mind! 

Heredity, not fast 

From sire to son, but long and vast, 

Blinded by Life, but seems to make ye blind. 

No change from the primordial doth appear. 

Within the earth's rotation of the year. 

Nor are ye heirless of her sane decree. 

The problem is potentiality 

Of Spring and Autumn, burdenful with Fate, 

Upon the seeds of labour ye must wait, 

Sowing the Consequence by which ye came, 

Flinting the fire not to fire but flame, 

With all the end of Destiny the same ! 

Mark ye, one drop most silently doth fall, 

And drop on drop 

Till all the drops in all 

In one supernal globe of moisture stop I 



34 An Earth Poem 

Knead ye, the rich man's bread, O SociaUst, 

The kernel has its single weight of grist 

And as ye knead it by your urge, not haste, 

No single particle of yours shall waste 

Its bounty from its goal, your palate's taste 

And yet 

Not yet! 

Can we forget. 

Not yet the question of the starving mouths unsatisfied 

Has been replied — 

Though arguments may twist 

Around themselves, until theirself is mist. 

Forgive, recede then, battle for your gain, 

As your own children's children shall for pain, 

For purple robes urged by heredity, 

Faster than on the first man, fall on ye, 

Tutored, endorsed, encouraged to be fane. 

Until at last all children's children's brain 

Shall cry on oceans, of the mute soul's sea! 

Return, 

The earth is never still the same, 

The fire that burned, growing at last to flame, 

Shall pass into a heat that has no name, 

The seas that seem a large stability 

Come weeping on fresh shores 

That burn. 

Nations decree 

The rampant land that held the torch at doors 

Of towered cities cease, 

And with fresh pall 

Stretch on through witnessed laws 

Of Genesis and Stars, 



Children of Sod 35 

— To where these floors — 

Earth's loins, the long beginning, grass and tree — 

Kingdoms are waged for mutability, 

Shall migrate kingdoms to fresh unity. 

And as the seas run higher up to peace 

Scaling the Heavens which each eve they won 

Earth shall at last be gathered to the Sun ! 

The future is a dream, while yet we cause 

Ourselves to bend a while this side 

The bars, 

Save as the past has taught us to make free 

Struggle and urge, plaintive heredity, 

And day falls on our day of bitterment : 

Strive for the bread, without it no content 

Has ever been, nor has yet ceased to be. 



piteous later sons, 
Although we stand 

Waiting with subtle speech at our command 

To mark the visionary path of good, 

Still have we not withstood 

The hardships and the bitterments ye bear? 

Nor felt the lash of that same brotherhood 

Which lingers in your damage and your care. 

We hunger not, nor know your need for food, 

Or knowing it have put it idly by. 

Then try. 

Try harder still to climb and drink our blood- 

1 mourn with ye! I mourn 

Such vain-set gain as unto ye is born! 
With tears I cry the lamentation loud. 



3^ An Earth Poem 

And utter the portentous prophecy, 

The poor that go unslacked become a crowd 

That shall arise in armies, like the sea 

That can reurge all power, in justice nude 

Of all sleek garments save her servitude ! 

I call with every man of hungry mouth, 

I weep for working women's need of sleep, 

And children who in tenements grow weak 

With famished bodies, the same time they grow 

To manhood's unretrieved impartial woe. 

My heart would burst 

For those who least may thirst, 

Or those who were by pitiless labour stung- 

Would run to bear them fruitage of the south ! — 

Would climb the mountains, since upon the peak 

The snows in pity for man's colder mood 

Should grow one withered single bulb of food, 

And seeking for such aid would inward seek 

Lest in my brain should lurk a comfort hung 

Beneath my knowledge — deeper than self is deep! 

As if within a tangled wood I foraged, 

As if thereby be storaged 

A mercy carven on a trunkless tree! — 

Would bring them betterment, than to be free 

Of merely starving aid perpetual, 

— Catching a sign which from the made mind fell 

Before myself upon such self could brood — 

Such good, as their inheritors must see 

When with more force and lesser enmity. 

All will for one last mutual decree. 

There is an urge that sings with voiceless song 



Children of Sod 37 

Through the long centuries, mute, frail, still strong, 
Where Vishnu wrote where Homer hung his lyre, 
Where Dante's hells are hung with halls of fire, 
Where sons of men leave echoes of their plight — • 
A record which the gods themselves requite 
With immortality — and these starved eyes 
Long to behold, with hunger brought to sight, 
For senseful feel of Earth more deep than sleep 
Here is enscrolled 

In sign and symbol souls of great men cowled, 
In priesthood of grave letters, 
Teaching the ready mind, to reconceive 
Its own frail child of thoughtage. 
Here allow, O leave 

Opened the pages for the ones who grieve ! 
There are no lessers, and there are no betters, 
But he who has a wit on each wrought page 
May spell the vacant words to sweet or ire 
Unto himself, the message strain and keep 
Proportioned only, as he may be wise. 

A pool is in a desert ; — 

Now but throw 

A stone within, and mark the eddies flow! 

A child his right of childhood doth assert — 

Untutored he, each year of weal and care 

Becomes a little more the harbinger. 

O though it be unwise to lift the plough 

From out the labourer's hand, this much allow 

That he may be the second child who now 

Takes on his lips the waters as a vow! 

The desert is not set apart from Life 



38 An Earth Poem 

Where manual labour chains her kith and kin, 
Growth which conquered flesh to make it rife 
For so much labour, starts to grow within — 
And the sweet pool wherein the waters rise 
Is Knowledge. Let him drink, no sacrifice 
Of clay can keep the Heaven from his eyes! 

What will come forth? A little will he gain, 

Then tumult, as the great reprieve of pain 

Then insurrection, but upon his sight 

Must fall the great predestined weight of light. 

At last the vanguard of the longest train 

Shall near the destined port, the wisdomed brain 

Ride through the mountains and the marsh amain! 

The biceps of the arm followed the thought 

Which had designed which W9,y it should be caught. 

Whether by swinging of scythe, weight of spade, 

Or drive of oxen through the burnished glade — 

Let it encompass labour or be naught! 

One frightful cry 

Men's hearts send up to lie 

Upon the bosom of the naked sky. 

Let us be taught ! — O let our souls be taught ! — 

Nay, feed the starving, let the books decrease. 

Or feed them as ye feed yourselves at least. 

Till over all as if above the feast 

The Dove shall harbour with her Wings of Peace. 

But O, not so, 

As waves on the pool flow, 

Comingle all, but all on further go. 

I look into the pool, and now I see 

Virtue has hand of reason to decree 



Children of Sod 39 

The larger Purpose, the fulfilling Goal — 
Crown every brow with wreath of Charity 
Until all intercircle to the whole. 

I have a thirst with every parching lip, 

I have a hunger with each yearning mouth, 

I choke my dust, and with some water sip 

The earth's intentioned sands which bring me drouth, 

I sleep in carnal beds of earth be-dire, 

I lay my face as others to the air, 

I will, since will can greater right prepare. 

But use. 

And not abuse, 

And still aspire, 

Upon Earth's comforts, over her despair. 

The sod in summer fields is rich and red 

Ready so succour berries and full grain, 

The Earth shall laugh her mother throes of pain 

Away and fill her lap with spoils for men. 

Most utter and unconquerably then 

Wisdom yourselves and seek to look ahead ! 

Bread, bread ! We cry for every hungry mouth, 
Yet know not how much cometh from the wheat. 
Nor know not through the winters of the crop, 
Nor how the green heads foster at the top, 
Nor gauge not through the spring its harvestment. 
Nor have in ourselves power to tell how long 
Must be the hunger nor the quenching it. 
Death blooms, like a pale bud within the south 
Opening where passeth the dawn's vagrant feet 



4o An Earth Poem 

Unseen by men, and lives like parasites 
Around the branched tree of heaven grope, 
Tangled in length by the great length of it 
Somewhat for hope, 

As strings follow their measured instrument — 
And deaths are interwoven unto bread. 
O tell, low song, 

The arid deaths of sods upon the fields. 
The deaths that happen even in a night, 
Day deaths of suns, and season deaths of rain, 
Changure of weather, deaths of heaven's will 
For ill and good that pulsate through the seed. 
Strange deaths of passage through it to the root, 
Stem deaths by crushure, choking deaths by weed, 
Growth deaths by chance, and chance deaths yet again 
By garnished wealth of being which each grain 
Unto the master touch of nurture yields, 
Nutriment deaths which make its passage still 
To purpose, and above them all the need 
Of strength in hand, in heart, in limb, in foot 
Of its consumer or consumers, hence 
O Life, thy dream is but an aftermath, 
An ornament to bread's dear eloquence — 
Rather than breath, the sound which comes from breaths- 
Life's consequence and not the life that hath 
Its intertangled being in these deaths, 
Man deaths through bread deaths 
And so good or ill. — 

Then what is it we crave 

Of this dear Earth save quantity of its own working stuff? 

Sleep, bread enough? 



Children of Sod 41 

What altars yet can raise imagined thought 

Of altars, till we banish for a space 

Dread of starvation, starvant suicide; 

Until on bread and strength we breed a race 

Standing fed and awakened o'er the grave 

Of premature conquerage, 

Until no longer falters 

Blood in its charnel chalice of wreckage, 

Compelling all surrendering heavens wide 

To bring forth future births from life self wrought 

Upon the tide 

That alters? 

Sleep deaths sometimes are closure deaths, where twine 

The convex vortices their perfect wholes- - 

Such sleeps are body sleeps, wherein the souls 

Forever mutable triumphant climb, 

And something of their inner selves divine — 

Such hourly deaths of sleep, as through deep time 

The widow for the orphan strives to keep. 

Sleep deaths, O husband lying neath the deep 

What alien surf upon thy dead bones sweep? 

Deaths through sweet sleeps of labouring alloys, 

Sleep deaths of joys. 

Mere nightly sleep deaths, visitants of calms 

That lie upon sweet girls and fainting boys 

And then awake them for the morning alms, 

Labourers' sleep deaths whereon the heavy balms 

Of strong oblivion crown the brow of toil, 

Passion sleep deaths of man and woman's moil, 

Sleep deaths of age, matures who seek the skies 

To grow of the new home a little wise, 



42 An Earth Poem 

Sleep deaths of soldiers ere their last death field, 

All these to mortals yield 

A competency in the self's recoil 

To Life, ere it shall seek that alien death 

Which Cometh once upon the lips of breath, 

The dear accustomed hands, the feet which cease 

And are laid lowly in their shroud of peace. 

What factor in the world doth steal ahead? 

What has reaction unto labour wed? 

What is this bee 

That now forever hums 

Its gold feet set in Heaven's cups of chance. 

Its wings adrift in unseen air, like drums 

Beating some unheard rhythms small and free? 

The Earth with mount and vale becomes its hive, 

The wayward tenure of all circumstance 

Leans to it fervently. 

And now it stings with sweet what is alive, — 

Draws all the pistilled juice the world has bred — 

Upon its back the pollen of the skies — 

Swarms upon swarms arise — 

The world succumbs — 

The buzzing sound grows louder, fills the sea — 

The interchange of goods converge — coerce, 

Half boon, half curse, 

Half symbol, and half sign, — 

Commerce! 

Stretching its laboured wings to the Divine 

Winds its contagion round the Universe! 

And shall I ask my song 



Children of Sod 43 

How long? how long 

Ago, was built a tomb whereon was laid 

To sleep deep, unafraid 

Frail labour's corpse as man's necessity? 

Or, shall I say 

How near the pith and kernel of the core 

Where first the apple in young Eden lay 

Hath cast its royal flesh and juice to stay 

Man's hunger? 

Which soft meadow green 

Was slumber's screen? 

Nay, nay, 

Since younger 

Then his first birth 

The tired Earth 

Plotted the scheme creative — 

Plotted in love for her own child's dismay 

The golden bee. 

The bees that seeking her she bore 

That he might have a thing wherewith to play, 

Wherewith to torture those who for it live 

Should he grow weary on her holiday. 

The void should lend him vision of its sight 

The output of the fruit, when it shall gain 

The evolution upward, should not seem 

To him an emptied dream. 

But bring him promise in its dying year, 

A link where he might chain 

A wonder and a fear, 

A promise, an expectancy, a gain — 

And thus for him even the cloud swept rain 

Took on a vest of moisture like his tear 



44 An Earth Poem 

That after artifice had ceased, e'en when 

He should outgrow himself his chrysalis 

The knowledge of mute things to comprehend 

Then — then, 

Should mark the link, so unutterably unseen — 

The ways his patient brothers take to wend 

Their purpose to a large serenity, 

Non-fugitive 

But all for even higher life than this, 

Before the long dim closure of her night. 

Bend O mute systems 

Now your charts and plan. 

Now bend them upon man ! 

For lo. 

Even as returned tides in waters flow 

He would himself outgrow! 

O laboured bees 

Sing ye of Death's almighty mysteries? 

Or but the harmless marriages of these — 

The cause of intercoursial innocence? 

No more/ No less! — 

The hummings of the bees hang in the bell 

As echoes of Thought's lost least syllable 

But the same time there stems 

Innoculate of iron irritance 

More labour sweating, then command of sense. 

The while Invention, as the dissonant bell 
We ring to skies with plottings of our own, 
Such combinations as bring tune from tone, 
Striking it with a gong by which lives tell 



Children of Sod 45 

How they grew capable, 

For matters when they meet 

Will lend to man a stranger child, grown sweet 

With elements of one another's spell — 

Wood of trunk of tree. 

Pearls that in oceans dwell, 

Gold from deep mines, and uncarved ivory 

From tusks of elephants that desert suns 

Have bleached to white, and wreaths of coral runs 

Beneath the tide of waters lazuli, 

Iron and ore, bamboo and grain split straw. 

Liquids and spices, oils and cinnamon, 

All simple solids that once being won 

Became by man's endeavour protean 

And spilt these laws, 

Wool from the sheep, and cotton from the root 

All chemicals that tide, 

All hinds that ride 

On creatures that above the moist sods ride. 

These, and far others by his hands are tried, 

Leashed and regoverned by his aptitude. 

Give up their solitude. 

Bend to that inward bell. 

Which cruelly doth all progression tell, 

We form, we make, we use, we buy, we sell ! — • 

And in the change shall view all changes swept 

Before his path. 

All secrets, mutabilities, once kept 

Within the heart of Nature's Motherhood, 

All strivings of her brood. 

The lands beneath the sea 

Whose trumpets called the sods which upward crept, 



46 An Earth Poem 

The pulses of grass seeds whereon were wept 

Ages from Heaven's perpetuity, 

The Naiad spirits of the self-dwarfed tree, 

And then the Insurrection, when he can 

As animals who raise the forward hoof, 

Raise slowly one by one his still set feet ! 

And for his soul have crimson Heaven's roof 

And for his Mind 

The closures of the wind — 

And beatings sweet, 

Conning himself in spiritual guise entire 

A shape transmutated through long trial 

By use, than by denial — ! 

Here is the angel born ! — here in this shell 

Of crystallising Sense! 

All goods once graced 

Here have the ages placed 

Each century the sky of ocean higher, 

And the full star of Inspiration more 

Shines on human shore, 

In consequence! 

Capacities Hke lower stars have set. 

And rising from their fret 

Hangs the pale orb of the ineffable! 

Our countenance by what we feel now traced 

Is as the silent sign of Imminence! — 

So into larger secrets we inquire. 

Now I forget, again an arid strip of land 

I see, run 

As if a mountain 

That totters like a turtle 



Children of Sod 47 

Then is free 

To breast its bulk upon the round rimmed Ocean, 

To speed itself to its primordial glee, 

Bathed on by Air and Sun, 

Bearing its exaltations, tree and fountain, 

Crevicing its scanty growth by diurnal motion, 

Ruling with voice of wind its spring and raw fed myrtle, 

Then comes the crusher under which 't will hurtle, 

Flatten its bulk and lie like one red stain 

Upon the sphered main. 

Let all men dream and sleep who will not gaze 

Upon predestined battles — war is here ! 

This but the head to bear his coronet 

On the Earth set, 

This red cloaked thing that bleeds 

And is a sore, 

Once more 

Upon the kindred level deep of Life! 

Here insects have forgot to sting the year, 

And seeds 

Not now the green effulgences of blooms. 

Only the bones glint like a bayonet 

And motley shades like covering sword and knife 

In crimsoned hands which vapourise the sand 

With pith of bodies breaking flesh. 

And where there leans the ancient white mouth of the air 

Nothing seems longer fair. 

The moist and sodden ground 

In sunken round 

In juice of slain body upward rolls. 

And weighty wind about the bleared sky tolls 

Heavy albeit more, with mountain mesh 



4^ An Earth Poem 

Of tombless souls and soulless, pentless, tombs! 
What drifts through yonder haze 
Upon the gaze? 

Not past nor future, since Time cannot be. 
Lest Earth shall have her mighty hold on him 
And rastle with her kind 
Till he in gasping breaths shall spat her face 
With spit of self -contagions, such as trace 
The walls of Atoms on Futurity; 
But from the climbing vortex of the dim 
Slaughter on slaughter rising in a host 
Opens a vista to the realms of fear, 
And with bowed head a continent doth rear 
From the mad seas, to which the rampant ghost 
Spreads wide contagion calling forth, 
Both South and North 
To find 

And stamp their tide swept shores in disarray, 
Till all the world burnt by sun of day 
Becomes skin spotted with the signs of war! 
This is no trance. 

No sudden variation lost in chance, 
But from the broad Sahara and Bombay 
It runs to Greenland — -all the world to char 
Till most like disembodied thought it came 
This thought, which was the knowledge of the world, 
Firing my blood, the fire after flame 

Which the great flints of heaven and hell had made and held 
Or the great spark of Earth which one day rose 
Between the Sun and Moon — 

I knew not why like wine that steals unrealised through the 
grape 



Children of Sod 49 

Fermented not, with unimagined joy 
Of unenshrining boon 

The knowledge stirred my being, let escape 
Such trembling shivers of the one great cry — 
I knew, I knew that it was well, perforce! — 
That no force like the Earth's could have alloy. 
But like some dreamer by a sea or stream 
We, being but the waves upon their course 
Run, heeding not the dream within our dream 
Until the latest wisdoms pass us by ! 

Pity go to the ocean, drink thy tears 

And then come back, and gently to me speak, 

Uplifting lovely face of struggling years 

Where all the calm lines hush about the cheek — 

Fold the loose skin with meaning — 

Then, to thee 

Will I make answer quiet, free, 

As would a corpse at noisy burial — 

Assure thee all is well, 

And from the song and flowers rise to be 

As thy communer fraught with charity! 

I know the harvest past. 

The grain lies dead in leisure. 

Husked are the grains beneath the moon's seizure, 

Sighing before the blast 

The poplar leaves lie on the pool at last. 

The merciless that once was young and pure 

Has past the sterile strength. 

The glow, the gleaning. 

Till nothing is which should be glad at length, 

And on thy tongue thy shapeless words become 



50 An Earth Poem 

Now hushed, now fast, 

As if they were thy dried tears, soundless, dumb, 

For potent impulse hath thou yet to tell 

Of rod and spell — ! . 

How grave gay things grew sad — ! 

Heavy with slumber and with sorrow clad 

Joy mourns as grief around her festival — ! 

Hush and be still: — 

I know thy will, 

Each beaker and each glass 

Thou wouldst refill, 

But nay, alas 

Do what thou wilt, O spirit, still thou shall 

Vainly re-do and pass! 

Thou tired shape, with weary hands 

Thou hast refilled the lands 

With labour and retiredlessness' mood, 

And with the dews of kindness moist the strands. 

And given to the ocean solitude, 

Hath flushed with ruddy purpose Earth and Nature, 

And brought the fledgling to the empty brood, 

And to the Children of the Sod hath brought 

A giant will that plots its own decay. 

Then what will give thee comfort, and have caught 

The promise thou hast fanned 

With helpless winds 

To keep, nor cast away 

Since by thy tainture, 

And by thy trial, 

Bloom, urgency, and good 

Have been experimented with till stood 



Children of Sod 51 

Thought upon thought 

Wisdomed by long denial! 

Time and Sun have struck upon thy dial? 

Speak not ! — nor say 

Thou what confinds 

Lest in thy speech I only hear 

The repetition of thy still dumb tear, " 

And see fruition lying on her bier. 

O now to me 

Be ghost of Air, 

Or prayer 

That listens round my ear 

In dearest gift of mute futility. 

Become the ocean. 

Melt until thy heart 

Yearns with all vapours, yearn until thou art 

Emotion, 

And a feeling, 

Surround, diffuse me, start 

The direful shadows which the fair light stealing 

Comes with, but to depart! — 

O closer still impulsive, integrate, 

Unknown as the skies — 

Until mine eyes 

Become with thy dear glory insensate! 

Dimly reach round the reach 

Till my arms circle thee, like foam, and I beseech 

Thee to immerse, and verge 

Truth, sight, corruption and decay 

And urge. 

Till in the night I pass my spirit to thy verity 

And pass away! 



52 An Earth Poem 

Ye who have anarchy within the breast 

Forget not still the question on the quest, 

To kings of purple and of commerce slay, 

To bury these, is only to array 

The retributive strength which envies them their prey, 

For seeing that ye envy, more than they! 

Who nearer came unto the ghost 

A skeleton of glory, more shall wist 

Themselves into the serpent coil to twist. 

Look ye, at first there is a little clan, 

A man takes precedence above a man, 

And next in kinship follow if they can. 

It is a simple law of Nature's guise 

Yet mark within it, if ye would be wise 

Each drop of rain in falling where it fall 

Is crushed by its successor, one by all. 

A King must have a crown, a crown a train, 

A train and hands to hold its amplitude, 

So the liege lords around a sovereign mood, 

If he doth fall, another takes his rein, 

As are the rain- drops pattered on the main. 

Your place shall come, even to wear the crown, 

What is the good to fling the sceptre down? 

Not what desire yearns to, e'er can bless 

But that procession of detainless gain 

Which shifts the shadow on the face of pain 

Can this confess. 

I do not ask the question here how far 
Body and Mind combine to spread contagions 
Of proclamations, 
Which visit the organic plan of nations. 



Children of Sod 53 

Of anarchy and socialisms, 

Catholicisms, 

Of suffrages long, wrecks and starvations, 

Or whether that inherent, inner star 

Guiding thinkless growths and man to bar 

Beyond achieval, makes this tongued clang 

Of ceaseless wail, this seeming futile fang 

Upon the bonework of our civilisations. 

While civilisation shows in its confusion 

Magnificent the managed intellect, 

Conquering all delusion 

With passion, and power adverse still intersect — 

Stands conquerless before equality, 

Bending to it the knee. 

And while I watch in Nature, the same 

Though silenced forces in might disagree 

Where fledglings die, where scavengers are free, 

Where vamporisms are allowed to be, 

And vernal summers o'er-ride misery. 

Where trees are blighted in the month of June, 

And little red leaves among the larger green do wither, 

And pestilence is drawn willing, whither 

The widest bloom reigns on her sovereign throne 

And seems with beat of Nature to atone, 

The while the heat bedizens 

And wizens 

The golden roundure and surrounding rune. 

Yet watching worms and riddles has its cloy, 
Nor incomplete development of joy 
Is such as burdens one fulfilment sweet — 
Let us attain; since this alone is bliss! — 



54 An Earth Poem 

It waiteth upon Nature in evolvement — 

The butterfly crawls from its chrysalis, 

The riddle has its solvement, 

And on a quest there run the going feet — 

Since blood of kings is stained with blood of Life — 

And while the pauper starves, the dotard sings, 

Air laughs aloud, 

Atoms of dust whirl in their merry rings. 

And renewed Caesar takes up Caesar's strife, 

An hour sees the buried rich and poor. 

And lineal descent our surety, 

Questioning the change which our own deaths assure 

Who Cometh next in reign, we cannot see 

And cloudy birth pours on Life's sea its cloud! 

Let us say Evolution-tenanted 

What we lamented, 

Yet, ere we have to watch our shadow break 

Let us ease more lives but for broad life's sake, 

And comfort One the poorer, lest there fall 

The chance that one be all ! 

It is a paradox that nations vex, 

Or government complex 

From the right angle meets not the convex — 

And governing 

Must be comparison, and not the perfect thing. 

For Earth 

Placing her fingers between airy wings 

Thence draws forth deaths, 

The deaths and airy birth 

Through which her songs increased 



Children of Sod 55 

In former days of Earth, 

The breaths 

Until at last for us she cast away 

This knowledge intimate of these her stings, 

Upon which larger destinies she still for us doth play. 

Along the lines of sky I watched again ; — there went 

The merging and the dying of the flame. 

The saffron rose of dawn had opened quite, 

The horizontal gleams of red had sought repose. 

Here was the symbol larger than the wings. 

The opening petals of the wild day's rose. 

All gone, as colours faded in a frame. 

And gone the pistils with the stars of night! 

No more the passionate flower had its scent, 

The dews were parted from its blossomings, 

Through all the heart of earth, the dear morn went. 

Bringing the bondage sweet 

Of lip to lip, and breast to breast with need 

Of food, thirst, and love hunger half compressed 

Have bent and kissed the print of kindred feet 

O why, not guessed. 

This truth. Necessity complete and recomplete 

Before in the whole knowledge of the seed. 

And higher in the scale of her degree 

Where the sod breeds her children to walk high 

Upon her burnished bosom without root? 

The great half questionings of Nature's plea — 

To promulgate her comforts, and make free 

Her future hesitancies that burn and wait, 

Preparing sluices for the hand and foot 

And heartbeats that two-fold increase, might stir 



5^ An Earth Poem 

Life to her labour moulding eyes that see 
Dimly at first through the womb's parted gate 
The gross glad joy of Earth's incredibility 
In hooded cloak of fin, or plume or fur, 
Or shadows, like my shadow passing by. 

The Present's chasm rose mine eyes before 

With all the hurts of Nature which it bore, 

The voids in man, the single species sent 

To unify the covenant intent, 

And to disperse the effiuescences. 

Dissect the difference by merely sight, 

Touch, sound, and feeling which beneath them lie — 

To taste the Mother Earth and be content — 

By use, their stage of being to decry 

Whether, or low, or high, 

Or beings lesser in their void than man, 

Seed, bulb, ground-tree and the soft rain of sky. 

Insect, breed-bird, and sign of spawn, and span, 

Of quadruped; whose blood 

Or attributes cannot distinguish them then — 

Complexity of structured vertebrae. 

Nor instinct, for he change has spread 

Amongst them. Driving oxen, 

Changing their habitude, environment, 

Extinguishing by slaughter, 

Longevity of life suppressing and increasing their extent 

By which he bends the breeds to what they bred, 

Fostering and expelling for his gain. 

Leading by halters 

Their instincts by his senses — 

Then how can he, man, higher set in gauges 



Children of Sod 57 



Or estimate his value in degree 

Where stuff is brain beside 

Of men of different ages? — 

Racial inheritancies, 

Amplitude of changes. 

Be judge or righteous tutor unto these? 

Or these divide? 

'T is now with man 

Let us repeat this over — and again 

How can he these divide to coincide? — 

Attainments, 

From remainments, 

Nor judge acquirements, 

Environments, 

Or races, or conditions. 

Of the same race' omissions, 

Conciliatory bars, 

That fret the natal stars — 

Heredity, habit, age or sex 

To parent their fruition? intersex 

These long within the flood 

Less tangibly right? 

He has not wisdomed to equality 

Nor ranged in ratios progressing light, 

But left first trenchment to the mysteries ! 

The blind, the poor, unjustify dominion, 
Conditioned man who waits before opinion, 
Refined in intellect, in low estate — 
Coarse, bestial, less in the dominate — 
Born, bred, raised and separate 
For some unwotted fate ! 



58 An Earth Poem 

The chasms of the Present's ever twist 

These things to wist — 

The states of man in his own one estate 

Intangible, migrate. 

But as equahty is not, the chasms 

For ever wait on future protoplasms. 

And if ye have enough of sleep and bread 

It is enough for body's need to wed, — 

And if ye have not? — ah! the sting is then. 

That man still stands misunderstood by men! 

Rise up again and strive, forget not how 

Slowly yet surely breaks the ever "Now! " 

Let poor and rich together seek to see 

A partial justice on a bended knee! 



Then wind around us pulses of sheer pain, 

wind around us never ending joys, 

Of vellumed raptures bound into the clay. 

As seeds are in the sod 

Yet while our ecstasies are us, 

And thus, O thus. 

We have the strength, the fortitude for day, 

Children of Sod! 

Moving the seeds with impulse of the plain, 

Upgathering shadowy stems unto their god. 

Descending blooms upon ourselves in vain 

For that great self which, as the sky is bent 

Shall never leave us, leave our instrument 

Ecstasy, ecstasy created not in vain ! 

All this have we now won within our clod 

The strings, the winds make for us are but those 



Children of Sod 59 

No stronger than the petals of a rose, 

No more enduring, 

No small alloys 

Within the human heart. 

Pain, joy and raptures pass — 

And pass as in the mirror of a stream 

The individual who goes apart 

Yearns for what the body the most craves, alas, 

Where ecstasy which was a god made dream 

Still must live onward to the close ! 

O vital winds, secreting and repuring 

The music which we make 

For God's sweet sake 

If thou must make for us our strings from gleam 

That know both joy and pain and something more 

That falls like the dim mutter of the rain. 

The years, 

And if the sun sinks gold 

Attain, attain; 

As love has willed it, our life music manifold ! 

Bid us achievements bravely bid farewell, 
Fervour our failure with the star of hope, 
Let us see light in darkness, yet, until 
We see in blindness, hear in silence, grope 
No more our way about the living grave 
To which some future we must yet be born. 
But watch the bosoms of the Earth still thrill. 
About the shore the waters curve and wave, 
The summer's glad replanting of the corn, 
The autumn's rich full yieldment of its grain, 
The morning sky auroral as a shell ! 



6o An Earth Poem 

The lily knows not wherefore she is white — 

The silence dreams, yet cries not, — 't is not speech,- 

Nor takes the rain impellent will to fall — 

The waves have circled the resounding beach 

One passionless in impulse, and the night 

Moves like the ghost of fire without intent. 

The strings of wind are strung on lutes of air 

Before the sound is woken! The hills' height 

With purple vapour wearing like a robe 

Has but been called by sea bathed dawn to prayer 

And has not time to draw her hooded tent 

About her shoulders; the dew bird sings o'er all 

Articulate in some unreal abode 

Of music ; and the trees breathless and tall 

Gaze for their meaning up unto the sky; 

Shall Man alone take care to hunger care 

Or wish the load upon his shoulders bent 

Or be creator of his instrument 

Which tells of blight and grief, it shall but share? 

Or haply with unconscious kinsmen die ? 

For long, has Earth with soft magnetics wild 
Re-equalised her swinging bulk in space, 
And kept her ghostly distance in sky place. 
Man his diverted air turned face allowed 
To keep distinguished from the mammals' mien, 
Gazing with yearning at the purple cloud 
With covenant of kinship set between, 
Conscious her touch shall o'er her fruitage glean. 
O wise, discernful Mother, thy success 
Has only proved the body's covetousness, 
Or soul accepted wilderness 



Children of Sod 6i 

Of flesh anointed and appointed screen! 

Yet as the eagle dips once more to soar, 

And as the foams mark o'er the ocean's pour, 

Thou hast no count of thy returning child, 

Refreshed by Heaven's dimness, in his death 

He doth yield up a sacramental breath, 

But with his individuality 

Passing in wings of flight, and drops of sea 

Has not a symbol on thy charactery. 

Thou art robed in a strangeness semblance fraught, 

And thy material garment is but Thought, 

His lives are thine, whether he be 

Recarnate man or fresh man-mockery 

Of the high Fates, not permitted me 

To spell with record's mutability! 



Now what? The many influences made 

A silence, and the many lights a shade. 

In all the springs and groves that bud and burst 

There must be concord — ecstacies that thirst. 

Beauties that waver trembling to exceed. 

Perishing delights and song. 

Gold crimson sounds, and airs, and fading lights. 

Snow fails when Spring exalted calls her need — 

And as if making of one time a space 

Longer than years, or as one breath is long 

The colours melted to their deaths in whites. 

The flown birds called fluttering to their nest, 

The dews of dawn were seeking the Sod's face. 

For all and one there were but longing rest 

With one more cry the Noon threw herself on Eiarth's breast. 



62 An Earth Poem 

I listened. Had morn ceased? Had it found death? 
Through wings upheld, voices of small mutterings still came; 
Insect flaps of hidden unseen flame, 
And tanglings sweet of wings that sought the day, 
Through thrills of colour, rounded orbs, and breath, 
Where Life in one triumphal song yet sings his still remembered 
sway. 

The Noon forgets. 

The Sun is lighted as a million stars 

Across the front of valley, hill, and dale, 

Mirrored wmdows, mirroring amulets. 

The Earth wears to receive her now, and bars 

From Heaven to Earth once more are cast away. 

There is no need for pity wan and pale 

To walk abroad in splendour of Life's day. 

Peace blows as waters over sunken sands, 

And things beneath are seen as through their deeps, 

Conceiveless powers have striven to obey. 

And Earth her unified dominion keeps. 

Her manifold later child should understand 

And make this one long hour of home, complete, 

I hear sounds of his many going feet. 

And bless him making echoes through the land, 

And bless him for his huts, of rest and sleeps. 

And thank him for the smile he wears in play. 

He shall be kind, and as a nursling may: 

To one, who has the wisdom of the heart 
Life seems a parasite that all doth start 
About a grave trunk tree. 
And though so close it twines there to it shall be 



Children of Sod 63 

As if it were still loath 

To leave the giant state it wreathed upon 

And with the branches comes and weaves anon 

A green pulsation still. And if he sit 

Longer in quiet of a dream, unfit 

To share with growth 

Or design of gain, 

As Spirits might whose melancholy pain 

Is joyful in the spirit, he shall see 

The twining of the leaves that disagree. 

As if a fancy ran upon a thought, 

The vine runs in the leaves where it is caught: 

Again, if he be on a sunlit isle 

Where southern oceans wind with nettled smile 

And mark the mainland stretch into its lair 

Of hiding dimness, as the very air 

May cover it, he shall perceive the sight 

The land itself is the sky's parasite. 

The land itself is full of what he knows. 

Let him retwine his brow with ivied woes: 

And through the gossamer resemblance fade 

Into the real conception of the shade, 

For noon is coming with a new fresh tale 

Or hidden secret which may perhaps prevail 

Beyond the hunger of the clay, where heart 

Shall be for all, ere doth the day depart. 



II 

children of Air 

(noon) 

The broad noon comes and glories on the world, 
The huts are built, the palaces and graves, 
And some are hungry and some more are fed, 
And Life has settled Life's recurrent cost 
With forces tangible and failures sad. 
And yet as if a child a ball upheld 
Showing some father at the sight full glad 
How little people judge the thing they hold 
And crave the same gift that the father craves — 
And will not pluck the bloom till it be red — 
And will not drink the wine till it be gold — 
And will not taste the fruit till goods be lost — 
The promise of their souls till it be dead ! 

The Heart is only hunger undefined 
By which the cursory blood and coursing soul 
Make manifest their purpose through the whole. 
There is a need for hunger, that through it 
We find fulfilment ! 
Let the heart be sent 

Commissioner for all by which we grow — 
A word may still it, a faint look may please, 
A root supply it, or a sigh condemn, 
A breath which even is but questioning 

64 



Children of Air 65 

Or Life's unconscious pulses, pain retrieve. 

Although some hunger may be aim unsought, 

And other through heart-knowledge become thought. 

It doth obey the laws which guide it when 

It is recognisant in brain of men. 

Reason and hope fulfil its destiny, 

Than let all conceive with Clay and Mind 

What they shall work and long for, that most fit 

Upon an ideal or an idol bent, 

And what they would have their will recommend 

Their forces to. If Love, then let them show 

Their spirit's unfurled banner with great ease! 

If it be song, forever let them sing 

That others may in truth their ways perceive ! 

Suddenly from out the noon there came a wind, 

Like a voice kind, 

It murmured, coming from the dawn and night. 

Shrouding its all too perfect voice in spell 

Of magic syllable 

Only to its own ear, discernible — 

Yet if ye listened, if ye be full still 

What shall ye find? — 

The voices of the sea that have no will. 

The clouds that speak in colour, and are blind, 

A single word, 

But one, O give me wind ! 

O give it, as the morning of a bird, 

Or as the grass is stirred 

By some faint foot that ever leaves behind 

The foot of man, and goes to meet the shade 

And finds upon each glade 



66 An Earth Poem 

Where'er soever he may choose to glide 

Over the hills, and vale, until it slide 

From out the vale into the shadow's wood, 

Where it must wait itself in dark's deep solitude. 

Hush! I am one alone. Child of the Sod, 

All dreams were mine, O winds, that brought the day. 

As ye do stay 

I saw the seed leap upward, glad and free, 

And man's supernal body glorified, 

And wills defied. 

Hast thou no answer — for the will in me 

Which I had lost with my eternity? 



Only an hour to thrill and to be mad ! 

Be mad and free! 

With feet that will move towards some love like mine, 

Walking faint ether with my own soul's sound, 

Then from our shrouds of ground — 

Perhaps to be burnt with some torch 

Of a woman's streaming hair, 

And my own fingers in hot noon's run scorch 

Turning from nothing unto all, at last 

Thus, thus to pour, the fast 

Sluices of being, into the divine 

Strong, strong and glad — 

Like solids, crystals, Air! 



O poem of the Air, how slight my hand — my hands! 
Always each way I reach for thee I find thee fair, 
— A loveliness surpassing tongue of speech — 



Children of Air 67 

While the great material there stands 

Many outworn harms that need their plaint, 

And in the future hopes that are so faint 

They frame the guesswork of the heavens to send 

Thought into, like the ocean. 

But thou blendest 

Thyself with vapours, passion, thought, and motion. 

Thou art the present, around thee there doth reach 

The very arms of man, thou art his end — 

His being first into thyself thou wendest 

In thee, not for thee does he make his prayer! 

Would for a thought that had an answering heart, 

A gold bee's pistil lying in a rose, 

Then might I have thee, Love, whom no heart knows 

Simple to start — 

Would I might find a loose thorn on my way 

Which some sweet briar hedge of Spring let fall, 

Then would I place it in my wounds all day 

And as I go bless all! 

Would I might find a tavern in the Sun 

And there some little time with Buddha stay 

Then might I light a single lamp for One 

Ere I shall pass away, 

Would I might travel with the mid noon's heat 

And rest my clay at evening with the cool. 

Then as a traveller turning bless my Sweet 

Who sees skies in a pool, 

Or if my sad returning should be long 

Leave her some recompense, all hers alone 

The echo of a faint forgotten song 

Which was mine own. 



68 An Earth Poem 

Of others yet I sing, not love of mine, 
But song in fainting replica I twine 

Life gallant to passions, aid my string 
Beneath the moon 'tis said that children sing, 
And maidens with most gentle winsome care 
Mark to behold if Love is printed there. 

In casement that o'er rose fraught windows swing, 

Some lovers fondle now fair women's hair, 

Lend me thine aid abortive, I must climb 

The o'erhung nook of this celestial clime; 

Prisoned in what my spirit which despair 

Holds oft a rose leaf on a bud of crime ; 

Away, foul thoughts, my mind must all be free 

To sing of such delusive witchery. 

For sing I must, as doth the morning thrush. 

For mark, here goes a man upon his knee, 

And some love mind of woman whispers hush ! 

1 do not think it well the moon to see. 

Custom, tie no loose or little string 
Upon my lute lest I shall fail to sing. 
Give me the Heart and with its silver lake 

1 shall be free, as clustered grass in brake, 
To stir a port of warble through a ring 
Which fancies make and her imagining. 
Delirious the Sun goes to the west. 
Then shall I sing of one I love the best, 
Of her, of him, or neither, let them rest I 

O Love, fulfil the Earth thy dwelling place. 
Make Heaven shine for each in some dear face. 
Permit slight eyes to moisten with glad tears. 
Glad when remembrance darkens or appears. 



Children of Air 69 

As if upon the quest of kindred souls 

Love was itself a long remembering, 

As if from some lost Aura of the goals 

In past lived lives, such will as his, could bring 

Stranger to stranger in a newer home — 

Ease thou with yearning thine own questioning. 

Let every human face a face enshrine 

Asking not further whether those divine 

With thine own image were a perfect thing, 

Thro' sweet encumbered climbings of the air. 

And as we roam 

Bless thou the brow as if a spirit there 

Waited in patient resonance to share 

Another's weal, or care. 

Another's pain, almost another's prayer! 

O from the child the mother give and take — 

Unto the man let hearth be deified. 

All brotherhood, which is for brothers' sake — 

All Motherhood enable and design — 

Teach tender pity to the sightless bride, 

Interweave passions' blood with sympathy, 

As if an innocent grape had broken wine. 

Exult intoxication which is thine 

But be thou ever near with charity — 

Aid all the lonely ones to come to thee — 

O with thy spirit stuff imbue each mood — 

And drop thy pale lips on humanity. 

Let age love age, and age love babyhood, 

Nestling to thee make all the world a child, 

And soothe it with thy runes which have beguiled 

All who have known Life to come to thee — 

Unto thee bent: 



70 An Earth Poem 

Thou art in thy wide presence' sacrament 
A wind about the forms thou seekst to bless. 
Thy breath make tender frail with laden hours, 
And those who once have known thy strange powers 
Shall come to thee, and wait on thy caress. 

All of thy losses in this fragile eld 

Thou hast with kindlier succour still upheld — 

Others and others wait thee while we weep 

The Heart to home — 

To lead with outstretched hands the way to sleep — 

And while thou art co-mingled thou art ever 

The only force, which meeting cannot sever, 

Thy peace is as the Ocean's, do not roam. 

Behind soft tears 

The years, 

Will drop for all 

As on a garden of unsodded biers. 

The rose will let her tender petals fall, 

And deck with beauty her obliterated pall. 

The moon makes cycles for her Occident 

Be it or late or early Love shall go, 

Be it or late or early that he went, 

On Master purpose to his orient 

With spices, as those by white oxen sent 

For festival or marriage celebrant. 

To bring home his eternal frequent show. 

No man but feels beyond his power to know — 

And hears, as if the source of some bright stream 

There start the first current towards the endless dream ! 

O, for the fingers that Love lover's hair 



Children of Air 71 

There is no thought unutterably fair 
Only the feel, the perfume, the despair! 
And lo ! the hand withdrawn a moment hence 
Has secret pulses of omnipotence. 
Some cast their love away in early guise. 
Some wait for after years to be more wise — 
But whether late or early Sacrifice 
Sits mistress of the bounty, broods with eyes 
Half closed, half open, o'er the heart's surmise. 
Children of Air, upon the wayward string 
Of this souls' cordial ye must bend and sing 
Sing over Love, as the first impulse, till 
Our soul shall grow at length to use its will. 
— Emotion of a life lead on a smile, — 
Until we turn our pleading hands to where 
No longer we shall clasp the tangled Air 
But the Sun's Isle. 

One fierce joy is which most the pagans knew 

And is re-echoed still, as from their seat 

They lean and listen to the morning feet. 

And tongues that babble with the weight of rue, 

The while the oracle lets it come true 

That all the world is as a tender meet 

With births and marriages, privacies, where sweet 

As in the reign of Earth ; first children grew. 

Desire is a sterile feed indeed 

Nor moistens any lips with happiness. 

On Earth which custom's weight drags from above — 

Yet here lies all the world's Titanic need 

The good, which this desire brings to bless, 

The great hope of the world, whose name is Love. 



72 An Earth Poem 

O dear Reprieval, 

O beautiful Receival, 

More exquisite than joy; Response to bloom, 

O hushes 

And faint thrushes, 

Sing to the heart, open its petals and make room. 

O stains on some soft berries, 

And frets and petal hurries. 

To close the time the morning glory ceases labours — 

O stains and stains on bushes. 

That make the crimson flushes, 

O ground and Sun and Sod and fair Air neighbours! 



Kneeling, what soul has prayed for Love in vain 
Save as that soul be in itself Love's grail 
All women's wombs that hold the blood of self 
Like a great lily its elixir gold 
Are too complete for prayer's disjointed pelf, 
Rung from lost yearnings small and manifold, 
Yet who else trembles at the brink of pain 
What womb-created man shall fail in prayer? 
Children, O children of the bounteous air. 
Your wills shall hold you till you may not fail 
Your passions keep you wayward from the tomb — 
Desires chain you in your mother's arms 
Yearning for her calm milk, as for the blood 
Within your veins which later brings you Life. 
And so, and so pray on to Love and Doom. 
The Sod is lover to the seed that springs. 
Dim drops of water to unquenched flood. 
Births to eternal motions which are rife 



Children of Air 73 

To spill themselves to others, or to plead 

The yearning of the aged tree to the sky — 

Murmurs to trumpets in their loud alarms — 

Birds that find their impulse in their wings — 

Fall winds that like to bugles heave and sigh — 

Summers that dawn from April's rosy bloom — 

Be these, O like; if ye wouldst live to tell 

How day goes mourning with her Sun to sleep 

To keep, 

With feet that bleed 

The unseen juices of the asphodel. 

But peace, the vision grows — 

Or perhaps my eyes 

Grow stronger by their growing will to see. 

She moves again, her faintest touch still seems 

As unexertive as some passion sent 

Into a heart's lost citadel, or bent 

The uncompelling grasses near the lea, 

Auroreal dew that open the wild rose 

Cluster about her garment, rending it and throws 

Thereon the shreds through which her white skin gleams 

In veinful dyes. 

Faint lady frail 

Art thou the child? 

Thou seemst like some imprisoned essence wild 

Caught betwixt cloud and vale, 

The crown for mountains and not men to wear 

Miraged in woman, as a moon in pool 

Where waters touch her and she is not there! 

Such beauty is too pale, 



74 An Earth Poem 

Too slender, and too small for Life to bear — 

Great massive Life that needs an atom's size 

To recognise, 

Even that cosmic Life itself is fair. 

Thou art where streams from sun and stars must cool 

Rushing among the tangles of the trees, 

Or where the midnight oceans find their mould, 

Yet thou must take a tangible shape, since we shall see 

Then creatures of an hour thy perfect gold. 

Nay, be not proud, descend thou so and hold 

My brutal question sacred unto me. 

Is there at least within thine eyes' deep sea 

The impulse of a woman ? for I claim 

No right, no grosser right of flesh to name 

My yearning. I would spiritualise my soul, 

I, the lost man, scarcely awake from dark 

I would but touch, but listen, but behold. 

Give credence to the sound I may not hark, 

Take purpose in the way that has no goal, 

Only to be with thee as air, in light, 

To be with thee and call thee as mine own. 

King of the beasts, I cast away my throne 

Disdain for thee, man's flesh which makes him strong 

Move onward from my link of harmony. 

Outgrow my blood, which sings its riot song, 

Break my tough sinews where lies powered man. 

Forgive me, I am not more slough sunk than 

Any lost climber on a mountain's crest. 

Or some parched diver, in the seas' lost snarl 

Quickening all the pulses in my breast 

Although I cannot penetrate the height, 

Waiting upon the Earth with blight and gnarl. 



Children of Air 75 

I do accept thee 

Let thyself sing on 

The rest that conies after these words complete — 

To frame them all the worlds have followed dawn, 

And ages felt the pressure of night's feet. 

I do accept thee strangely, O my sweet 

Out of myself to thee to be withdrawn. 

Children of Air, behold, with motion set, 

Ye slowly and imperfectly rise, 

Now from the morning Earth the dew, once wet 

Is lying in the Sun's vermilion eyes. 

Ye have been nourished, ye have known sleep, 

And now with higher potencies ye steep 

The burning liquor of your untoward Mind. 

As if ye drank yourselves your own heart's wine 

And filled the chalice fine 

To drink, and drink your very selves again ! — 

A lambent spell invisible grows bright 

The clouds in Heaven like the kine 

That wander in the meadows are all white. 

Bulb after bulb ye seek and may not find, 

Because in the pure liquid of the space, 

With eyes upturned ye mark the gossamer Air 

Sheer as the yellow corn of ripened hair 

Whose tassels blow in Autumn's wandering wind — 

Yet lo ! behold ! a primal instinct vast 

Invisibly shrouded here at last 

As a fair child that Life has taught to spill 

Your being with ; exists — 

A blind mad boy 

The child of his own race, 



76 An Earth Poem 

The first child born unto material joy, 

Unto the pleading voice of all he lists, 

With unseen Air that every current drifts 

He joins in festivalling your natal joy, 

His name is Breath: 

The cause, 

Of all your later laws, 

Waiting beside the womb from which ye came, 

He beat with unwatched wings the heart to flame. 

As Icarus the waters while the shame 

Sat on Prometheus' brow. 

He plighted with his Element his vow. 

From which a higher motion brings forth sound 

Unloosened from the ground, 

And knitting senses twain 

Leaves ye to listen now. 

Until ye shall give respite unto death. 

From out the Earth ye taste 

The ritual of food as if the bread 

Of high communion on Air's altar mass — 

The prehistoric dimnesses which pass 

The mammal to the man, lend ye a scent. 

As if with Nature highest beauty blent 

Which the blind flowers give forth from their graves 

There could not be a waste. 

Ye touch her burdened bosom as ye tread 

With foot to thought, upon the high Air-waves 

Which give forth sound to answer to your pleas. 

Higher and higher climbing as to fill, 

The still dim waiting harvest of your days 

With some new form collateral to your will. 

Some praise — 



Children of Air ^^ 

And while the cover of emotions shifts 

The human heart assumes her higher ways, 

Till sound becomes the face of Air, 

And motion is her form — 

Ascend to where 

Within the region of the pulses' storm, 

The Heart, and Mind, shall open wide their door 

And man shall live for Love 

Here is the store 

Of potencies, that cleave ye still above. 

Love gives the child 

O Children of the Air, see how he lies 

Upon the breasted Mother ! No disguise 

Can be more naked of its mystery. 

From whither was he driven ? 

From whence this tiny form, these upturned eyes? 

His breath is mingled even with her sighs, 

And lying calmly on the human sea 

Of first awakenment, he challenges 

The forces to obey him, as if given 

The dim authoritative predestined key — 

And by reverberant transiliencies 

Prepares his way to Life's requirements wild. 

My love is not as others, she disdains 

Slight joy and pains, 

And slighter frail fulfilments when they come 

Laden as merchant barges, with their wares 

From some rich port, across the dark seas dumb 

Complaining, but its melancholy shares. 

For trafficking of joys to her brings loss — 



78 An Earth Poem 

Such as to them that sell, and may not buy — 

She would I brought her tears, and perhaps a sigh 

Like the night wind that played about the cross, 

Yet, if I call her sad, and never gay 

Remember I, in grief she too has smiled 

When I was sad, to cheer me on my way, 

And opened for me laughter as a child 

From the great cruse of frequent jollity. 

And lit for me soft blisses in her eyes. 

So something of a joy to me is she — 

Coaxing my rapture with a strange surprise, 

And cozening my sorrow with her own, 

Comforting me with companionship 

She opens her pale lip 

And kisses me, and speaks in undertone, 

So is she made for others as a god — 

She lives for me, an image of my mood — 

An idle, miraged image set abroad, 

Sadder, perchance than frailer womanhood — 

Gayer than man's unutterable despair 

Hid in sardonic laughter, all in vain 

That alienates great Heaven from his prayer — 

I trust her, she is wise, she fears no pain 

And fears no fears. 

I drink with her at ocean of her tears, 

But like a lioness in desert sands, 

Tender and brave, for me, she understands. 

What particle falls instantaneously 

And vibrates with a music in the ear, 

If waves are stirred within its ebbless flow? 

What falls upon each closed mouth with a touch. 



Children of Air 79 

Of constan-^ lovers' kisses while alone? 

What lies between the eye and what we see? 

Air, O Air, always, Air! 

What substance lies upon our cheek and hands ? 

What to our forehead lies more near than thought? 

Upon the Earth what company is brought 

Of wavering and wandering o'ermuch 

About the loneliness where none appear? 

Chiding, mad, caressing constant Air, 

Working slow rhythmic pulses into tone. 

Making the roundure of the globes of sands ! 

My love, if thou but leave 

Thy shadow on the world it is enough — 

For to my darkened heart thy shade is light, 

It doth requite 

Dream an imprintment, thought itself a dream, 

As if blight might be the dear remembrance of bloom. 

It is enough for man to raise a tomb 

To that he might have loved, 

So there is wrought 

An image unto beauty; those who grieve 

Athwart the portals of a hidden gleam 

Shall be ennobled, empty eyes of sight 

If they defy incredible desire, 

And sense, the very progress to inspire 

Necessitates a level beneath aim, 

Some feeling thus is proved. 

Let it be that we have, so that the Mind may frame 

A subtler idol ever having caught 

By use the lesser idol whence it came. 

As by the sea, the flying of the chough, 



8o An Earth Poem 

Or as the day sinking within the vast, 

The Past 

Is in itself its own iconoclast — - 

As fire manifests its heat in flame — 

Or shame 

Is but detention from the limitless — 

And need, a mutability whose name 

Is spelt with graven letters of success. 

Since search implies its knowledge, can I then the less 

See thee in utter dark, though thou art dim 

Or seek alloy? 

And could my love in open skies of joy 

Behold thy utter brightness? Love for him 

Who is content to follow shall be guide, 

And follow though the path be closed, or wide 

His utter impulse, to its furtherest rim. 

Let the One leading never fall behind 

Though grave emotions be the fruit entire 

Which are the stimulations for the Mind. 

No sluggard of heart ease is ever kind, 

But lure and yearning therefore do we find 

To seek the re-perfection of the same. 



Thyself, my love ! Thyself ! Give me thy all 
As unsurrendered airs about thee fall ! 
My eye envelops thee! 

My thought goes out to drown thee as a sea! 
While my pale Heart is waiting at the door 
Of all my senses, for most utter thee ! 
No more be film of vapours, O no more. 
Until I vamperise such vapour's core! 



Children of Air 8i 

And yet, O Presence, before whom I bow 

Thou shouldst unwittingly consume my dower 

Which is the stem on which Life holds her flower, 

As well as sap my being, ease me now — 

Teach me the way to lose myself, and how 

In that same quiver of departing strength 

To suck fresh Air for the impartial breath, 

For in the Egos' passing is not death 

Nor Love can part the Heart and Frame at length 

Although as if a Karma, spread abroad 

A bed of abnegation where we lie 

Giving the Heart its cherished need to die, 

We must awake that we may still afford, 

Life to its giver, for a longer space 

Nor pass we with our longings laid awaste, 

Nor pass my thoughts which are all on thy face, 

Lest I should make too momentary haste, 

And from the world, my poorer self for ever 

Its mead of growth unutterably sever, 

For all must have its way, and not be held 

From its own opening of the gated world — 

Must pass in its own kind as dew and Sun 

One falling and one shining, to but make 

Each individually the will of Fate. 

So are ourselves reparted in their state. 

My bones must knock upon the sands of Time, 

My body's being cannot Life forsake — 

My spirit rest with thee apart, and climb 

The walls about thy being pleasantly 

While waiting for the will to die, I stay 

To aid my body through its rest of clay. 

Till death shall give it to the winds of day. 



82 An Earth Poem 

For not our lips shall have their troth in vain, 

Not marriage, nor our hands divorcement try. 

If thy sweet body shall with Nature die 

Mine must await her calling voice, again 

So they may meet one sepulchre of pain. 

But for my heart with thine, O let me cry 

Dissolvement in its strain. 

For was our birth in one 

And each grave beating moment of the breath 

So should become our bodies in their death. 

But not while Nature, with a complex chain 

Makes the same use of disengaged forms. 

Hers is alone the epic unity — 

The long narrative simularity — 

The function and the flame — 

The same. 

Though through one life, I may have died as thee. 

Been man, or woman, by a strange mishap, 

Experiencing all variety, 

Now I must trust to nature on her lap — 

Trust to the meaning which her wills aver 

For what has been, what is, and what shall be. 

No breeze of soul my pulses break nor stir. 

The Orientals' faith is but the Occidentals' reasoning 

Albeit as gnats gather in their storms, 

As rivers to the single ocean run, 

As individuality a name. 

As parent throat gathers all birds to sing, 

Reincarnations are but to imbue 

A perfect soul, with knowledge whole and true 

Which comes alone through all experience, 

Sailing the wing across the nether blue 



Children of Air 83 

Till death upon all single deaths outgrew 

His sapience. 

Let me accept Life as my parenting, 

As transmigration or Heredity, 

Working its single purpose to be free — 

A dial, watching o'er the trial Time — 

Whose shifting of the weight of light and shade 

Tells with a pendulous tongue day's start and close, 

And from such repetition thereon throws 

The passing of man's days, 

And the amaze 

Which waits therein, to teach him weals and woes 

Wherewith his inner, higher self may climb ! 

Children of Air, 

Children of Air, what would ye? — 

In this space, between the Earth and Heaven, Sod and Sky, 

This nothingness well called the consecrate, 

Fold of creation endless, filled and bare? 

Life comes too soon for ye, too long to wear 

Her ever present robe of solitude. 

Death is too near, to ever long to die — 

Atom on atom gather till they are 

Each other's star, 

Pressing there is no bar — 

Congealing no unmitigated shape. 

Hope as eternal, phantom as despair — 

Watch the great will, its finite emblems drape 

In vacuum and substance! Here the eye 

Has second sight. Only upon such space 

The Sun of kingdoms kills, the dark of night, 

There is no other warfare 



84 An Earth Poem 

Bloom and blight, 

The open battle of lone Nature bore, 

Nothing that has a semblance wears a face, 

The laws of gravitation bear the power 

Which stems the fair heart of each perfect hour — 

And all is pregnant in a changing mood 

What would ye more? What more? 

Wait, for from Sod's low ease, 

From couches of the trees 

The birds that please 

Rise up the morning glories' sonneteers! 

And in the noon, the day worlds' middle years — 

The stillness breaks the crescent shape of sound! 

The evening falls the dew notes to the ground 

Cry ye as well, and from your million fears 

Give echo to the comprehending spheres! 

O dim! OAir! O God! 

Joy that sings ! 

What long communication to the Sod 

Shall this grey matter round the nerve of earth 

Through centuries unfold? 

No globe can bear 

Thy immaterial existence old, 

Thy seizure — and thy mirth — 

Save it shall be unpoled. 

1 wake and hear 

The silent footsteps as they disappear 
Sounding upon the sound waves of grey care — 
Veins in the footsteps leave strings of gold, 
And light is fire, 



Children of Air 85 

Electrical compare, 

As music to the strings that make a lyre 

We chain the image in our moving lair — 

Our cities are thy lightnings, 

And we run 

To hitch the beast of labour to the Sun — 

For every soul doth keep thy imaged breath 

Upon the mirror of its waiting death — ■ 

Lo ! there shall be a substance Helium 

I can no more, O children, lest we come 

And yet the secret is not yet all done. 

The Air around us grows with dimness wound. 

As if the whirl of motions deadened sound 

Naught can I hear. 

The denseness grows apace. 

Children of Air 

What follows after care ? 

Can mine own spirit upon moisttire trace 

A portent or a sign; 

Somewhat to grace 

An evanescent hungry Heart, combine 

With grave ennobling purpose into line 

Thought or yearning or desire fine? 

Nay, 't is an Aura I behold at length 

Some shadeful symbol, of a shadow's strength. 

Now it has taken form and now a face — 

Be it of man or woman, mine all mine: 

Ye see not with mine eyes the tender shape, 

Ye are forbidden the first lure of sight 

Which makes the brightness, for my spirit bright 

It shall express. 



86 An Earth Poem 

It was intentioned that it was for me. 

Now it again takes shadow, as if night 

Descended slowly o'er its tracery, 

And once again assumes a loveliness 

Which out of the surrounding vacuum 

Upon the Air with more exquisite grace 

Doth let the roundness of the contours come, 

And now again, the moon with throatless hum 

Waves the sail wings of insects as they fly. 

The moth ambitions, and the butterfly, 

His yellow lifts from ofE the resting ground, 

As without sound 

The ear unnoticed by the mind can hear 

The petals from the flowers as they fall — 

Nature who once was sterile in her thrall 

Accepts aesthetic "knowledge from the space. 

The tree leaves seem a mouth, the wind an ear, 

And vistas melt from sight before they disappear. 

What is this palpitation clayless born ? — 

Almost my heart leaps forward on the way 

As if a rose expectance, was her thorn, 

I pierce with pain, the vision which has sway 

Upon me, till I know not night, nor day. 

And now, the form takes on the guise of her 

V/ho only unto me can love aver. 

Found, and yet wrought, in my own seeking mift— 

As if the ground should let the vapours lift 

Into my sight she comes, half found, half made, — 

As if my brain created, from its cruse 

The beauties gods let loose, 

As if down all the heavens, did but drift 

Her flame of growth, 



Children of Air 87 

White as when fire came 

VermiHonless in concentrated glow, 

Or when the rain has covered for an hour 

The purple coldness of a passion flower — 

A half completed throbbing woman stood. 

Till once again she faded in my mood, 

As if no longer, could frail thoughtage brood 

Around the pinnacle of solitude. 

Once more, a vaporous shade, — 

Until the form across the air was laid ! 

Part wisdomed ! part afraid ! 

Part glad ! part loath ! 

Staying, as if in staying she would go. 

Veils from Heaven were rent, that swayed mine own — 

Then did thy form most falteringly pass by — 

Then from without like a white flame 

Thy Virgin body stood, beside a light 

Which light of sense, my higher senses feel. 

Then wert thou only to me but a sight. 

Or the strained chalice of a linked tone, 

Which parted sense, and left me yet alone. 

— Thy heavenly fame — • 

Then comes the dread, again 

It seems the shell of Heaven, hung with rain 

To make it heavy as of enwrought steel — 

And if, upon it hilt of heart should lie 

Yet is thy death as quiet, as in vain — 

And while I wait 

My song goes out, and leaves me desolate. 

Dear love, I wander with thee, into space — 



88 An Earth Poem 

With thy dear body on my arm Hke cloud — 

Then do I hear weird men, shriek aloud — 

Or a strange city totter in its place — 

Then, as the hills we reach my face to thine, 

I hear a trumpet call across the sea, 

A grey sound lily breaking on the lea — 

While with thy fragile voice mine ear doth twine- 

I lose all sense of motion, and of peace, 

I cannot bear thee further than I stand — 

Within, without, the actual command 

Of seizures of the world that will not cease. 

Therefore I grieve, and lay thee in thy tomb 

Among the people's barbarous noise, and sight, 

But I cannot be with thee in the night, 

Therefore the night to me, again is gloom — 

I lost the sense— ^I missed the hidden trail 

To climb the sky, in instantaneous flight: — 

Or bear thee on death rivers down their course— 

Or catch thy face like sunlight on the hill. 

O, let the noise, and sight go on, and on, 

Let thee be buried with the multitude, 

Frail, 

Passionate, and slight! 

My heart clutches remorse 

From lack of will, 

I could not go the way thy light has shone — 

I must abide and wait in solitude ! 

Tossing the wisdom to the winds as pelf. 

Knowing myself incredibly blind, 

Who trusted a lamp's flicker for the star 

That keeps the seven keys to Paradise! 

Now, I forget all knowledge save thine eyes. 



Children of Air 89 

All, save what one hour bliss, with thee may prove — 

Willing to be a scavenger to poach, upon thyself — 

Upon the right anointed to the bar. 

In the broad light of this unasked for noon — 

As if with very love, 

Not near, but soon, 

We should the end of the researching find. 

To culminate myself, yea unto God, 

No more bare glory of the human hour, 

Give up the blissful scourging of the rod, 

The weal, the power. 

Chew meat that cannot nourish my own growth — 

Spill the lamb's blood which carnal runs in me 

As fast towards heaven as the angel's tears, 

Once more for thee. 

O strange and tempting presence, be not loath 

My Lord created manhood to dethrone and mar! 

Children of Air 

Look ye ; this is not much — 

Some monks have gone a lonely life for sin. 

For sins' sweet pardon — 

Some been tempted by a touch 

Of vain art's vagrant hair — 

Some have decried 

Much wisdom, in an ideal that they sought, 

And bravely retribution from within 

Paid, for the bounty of a hindered thought. 

Have worshipped Christ, or Adam, in the garden, 

And sighed 

Away a moment's duty with a rose — 

Some have allowed the hurt of needless thorns 



90 An Earth Poem 

To prick their life's sap, some have bathed their skin 

In the moon's fluid gazing on a star 

Till it were overwhite for life's intent, 

Who knows? — Who mourns? 

I am Columbus, waiting to put forth 

An Alexander, with an East turned eye, 

A Nansen, seeking nearer to the North, 

Newton, an alchemist, whose dream compounds a dye. 

Who takes the ruddy morn for drape of wine ? 

Then, but the peaceful grape grows on the vine — 

Who takes the ruddy morn for love, of flame ? — 

But one step through the sunrise on, he came 

Then folded back into its squandered shape, 

As man became a mangod from the ape. 

Yet sunset, gives no more 

With beast of golds 

He takes across the seas what he beholds, 

The heavy tankard of his vintage-twine 

Serenity of day's imprisoned moulds. 

Then let us, when the stranded noon is full 

With spilth of opal, passion's absinthe drink 

The after sleep, that totters at her brink, 

And as the sore 

Lie on the ground, and mark what to her folds 

In atmospheric sequence, as a gleam 

Of tortuous chameleon among green like a sequestered stream. 

The mute set trees 

That wind the leaves of breeze, 

Then stillest calm pervades — 

Here shall be love, Children of Air, which fades 

With day of life on her meridian — 



Children of Air 91 

Before she tumbles from the heights of Can, 
Down to the western drawfage of the Sun 
Here shall be won 
The love, which comes upon a sword to man ! 

tears go out and find thy voice 

The faint wind has no breath they said, and came 

After they had sought through all the Air 

For motions back to me — 

To me, and thee, 

But I could not rejoice — 

They fell adown my lips, and through my hair, 

They touched me with cold flame, 

And I, who knew not tears said they were sad 

Because they were not blown as rain thwart wind — 

Look on me, dear, and kiss me through their flood, — 

They will not leave us desolate, and mad, 

Because we know them not, nor can them find, 

Our tears — our tears they are the tears of blood ! 

Left on the Earth, left, I stood to gaze and sing, 

To question a lost question, lost in Air, 

Still things were fair. 

The meadows and the hills, the vale and height 

And silence like a godly ghost was mine 

1 was the King 

Lord, Master, over-Lord of sound and sight, 
And I could gather of these wills their shine! 

Children of Air 

The direst pain I missed, 

The dreaded share. 



92 An Earth Poem 

The direst agony, O near, and far, 

To feel the Earth He mute beneath the star — 

No loneHness of softly waving trees, 

No parting branches kissed, 

No grass exertant in its harmonies, 

Of interspreading growth, can this confess. 

Although I lie alone and watch its search, 

Or catch the rustle of the leafy birch 

Or the trees' tone. 

Such utter, unrepealed bitterness — 

As to have custom, hide a wretchedness 

Of mine own heart from neighbour-waiting prone, 

Of loved one waiting ready it to mark. 

And still in lightsome commune, stay and hark 

My little words fall, in a quiet stress 

That cannot hide' it, neither can express. 

I hungered with the dawn. 

The joy of hunger, and its swift repeal, 

I felt the alienness of yearning ground, 

And met with man, the striving and the feel. 

With moonlight, I have lulled myself to sleep 

Knowing that God His silentness would keep 

And had strength wasted that a habitude 

Should fall upon my lot in heavy mood. 

— A garment made of sackcloth, and of blood; 

Of Air and sound — 

Wherewith the afternoon should me devise 

To lure me on. 

But no pain equals to Love's sightless eyes 

That cannot know, bent close upon one's own! 

Humanities that cannot raise a tone — 



Children of Air 93 

While their twin hearts are buried in its flood ! 

The ill conceits that separate the wife 

With arms around the throat of husband pressed — 

The barren voids that join a mutual life 

Between two near ones, which cannot be guessed ! — 

For can lives ere be mingled though rough haired calm 

Most like a brush- wood boy 

In certain moments, with a lazy balm 

Relieves racked torture, or the sweets that cloy, 

With heavy weight, of onward pushing joy, 

In movement's incessationed irritant? 

Since growth allows no stoppage, for a meet, 

Life, no pulse's slackage for a love's intent — 

Can man and woman seeking find one sweet 

If ratio of growth divisible 

Is individual in speed perforce ? 

Or leaves that bud, be of a single size 

Though harboured on one stem, in friendliness? 

The hand that brings fruition gives excess — 

Lest would oft pliant Air fall on the Sod, 

And laws of gravitation cease, 

And hidden will of Life be visible, 

And motived masterdoms yield up their course 

To strength less used, and aims which are less wise, 

And old stagnation wear the grey of peace — 

And any urgeless silence seem as God ! 

This am I saved from, yet perchance 't is way 
That makes contentlessness, re-urgeful urge — 
To meet a moment on the tottering verge 
Of ocean, as loose light has fostered day ! 



94 An Earth Poem 

This argument, of use' futility 

Unlaws each law, where more laws here are seen 

Then undiscovered secrets, and a screen 

About the still unknown proves a cover, 

For now one yields, as forests yield their green, 

And now once more Man's penetrating eye 

Dissects, as we 

Re-harbour somewhat over 

Our senses; o'er a vibrate, or a dye, 

Which has escaped us, or we've passed it by. 

Let us search on, and rather this accept 

This one hypothesis of many shows 

That there is casual being, which our eyes 

Meet in the falling petals of a rose. 

And in the ruling Earth's perennial throes 

Rather would we a disaccordance see 

Than build all accord on disharmony! 

We are — although we know not — after what shall be. 

An inquiry is blinded, by the past. 

Let us take counsel, of a wild surmise. 

And with a tide, which guides not go to sea. 

Although upon the heart, the tears are wept 

Which lead from grafted Life, to Life at last. 

Children of Air, I do accept my loss 

Of human life, as ye accept the same 

When your hearts' fire mounts not into flame 

Upon your dearest loved one as a cross: 

Dream ye, there does not soar the albatross 

Because he is a bird of omen dread? 

Or that the aster waiting for the Fall 



Children of Air 95 

Because her growth is as a widow's pall, 

Because all summer blooms have died in red, 

Blooms not at all? 

Dream ye the futile snows bring not the primrose home. 

And all blues are not gathered in the sky, 

And voiceless cries are voiceless in the heart? 

Nay, — that which is within us — doth impart 

Itself unto its placement, low, or high. 

The higher mountains of the quest reclomb. 

Beside the marble solace of thy hand — 

Above the solace of thy marble hand 

I stand, 

As one who gazes on the moon — 

Thy still, soft body now has lost its tune. 

No more, the motive which I understand 

Springs from the tired veins, where thy dear shape 

As ocean let a kindred light escape, 

To let thee climb. 

Caged in thy premeditated balm, the long 

Sweet calling through the desert, for thy mate! 

Thy feet shall ne'er now strain, the sands of time! 

Thy breath shall never challenge, now thy fate ! 

More slender than the voice which willed thy song, 

Almost, than Heaven's self more delicate. 

Yet, when I view 

Such listless shapes of women who lie dead. 

Waiting but for one moment to attest 

The great sublime of rest. 

That it may linger by their unused breast — 

Their slender, white forehead, 



96 An Earth Poem 

That is not still, to crown the eyes foresight — 

There comes, but true 

Such questioning in me, as when the night 

Winds her most utter dark with crown of dew, 

And nothing more — 

As when I gaze, about a rimmed shore. 

As when I mark a morning glory lay 

Her soul between the chances of her leaves, 

Or when the nest's content of straw can ease 

The robin's trust, against the wind's dismay! 

Tilt back thy head, O Love, 

Once more, that now 

Thy lips shall give thy kiss's crimson vow 

To one who seeks for thee, be he the Sun, 

Bearing thy colour yearningly, as I 

Who for my sacrifice must see the dims 

Of Airs wrapt round thee, as the closed Sun swings, 

And, 'neath thy brow 

Close thy dear eyelids, from their wonder how 

Thou cam'st to be — • 

Wind the long shroud, to run 

Athwart thy prisoned limbs, to catch thy feet 

Within its folds as Psyche in her wings — 

What was not mine in Life, shall it be sweet 

To shroud away as lover to the sky? 

And have the white clouds, who for vacant whims 

Nourish the sod with deaths, now watch thee die? 

Nay, but some import means 

The love, the dreams. 

The closing of each faint mortality, 



Children of Air 97 

To one, who loves, that loving he may see, 

And seeing that immutability 

Which is above, 

Bends back upon his circumstance to Love. 

I love the Sod! 

I love the hidden spring! 

I love the futile labour of the grass! 

The lucid effort of the wind crushed pod! 

I love these things to pass 

An anxious eye, athwart the goods they bring 

That more of Life and Death be known, alas ! 

I con the energy of each and all, 

I am myself a broodsome cognisance, 

Watching how this and that by bulb and stem then 

Leans forth, 

What purposing beyond the wills of men 

Leads the south forests towards the ice-girt north. 

The casual, towards the consequential trance 

In which all being, may with simple tongue grow fain, 

Cry the far striving of her entity. 

Yet they, who follow blind stars not, may paint 

With commune, non-argumentative and clear, 

How nature, married to casuality, 

Doth free the flower, and fruit, which we hold dear. 

From other claims save to repeal the year. 

For mark, the system is intelligible. 

How every leaf, for every leaf must fall, 

And every tree, surrendered to its own — • 

How equitably sure the wind has blown 

The sowing of the grain — 

And Spring, comes leaning on her staff of snows 

7 



9^ An Earth Poem 

Pale, annual, aurorial and faint, 

Upon the midnight of the winter's woes. 

So — So — 

It is by soft recalls these fair things go ! 

A far hilled echo, a repeated show 

Bloodless and slow. 

Down into space, a mind unsatisfied, 

Itself denied, 

Sent noose of thought, by winds reimpregnaxe 

Shorn and desolate; — 

Can naught move hither of a kindred kind ? 

Need sad song wait 

To watch the starling gather to his fate, 

And all the birds sing on who are most blind. 

What is below? ■ 

Kindly the herds which do return with fall 

Of dew, at eves 

Must yonder go, 

Long have we watched these all, 

Watched, in our reason's pool 

Their will-less pall. 

Have drunk beside them, waters calm and cool, 

The link decried 

Between mute nature, and the animal 

Must make us friends with these. 

The secret still 

Of vertebrae that in the oceans thrill. 

That bones, the starfish on the beach yet shall, 

Must make us still, the hidden mysteries. 

The wind swings high ! 



Children of Air 99 

Yea, even ye shall die! 

Yet unpremeditate yet ! 

Nature here opens, from her womb, and fret, 

Her sacramental pleasure finding child. 

Shall not such spacious bodies, as are set 

Above Earth's face, not then be free 

Of Life and Death, and Nature fondling wild? 

She hands them caskets, of her energy — 

Each single hoof thing wears her amulet — 

Wrinkling her brow that they may move, and train 

Their pleasure, their inherent nutriment, 

And die, and live again. 

Her laws are change, but yet another stranger law has she. 

As the dim mountains, range on useless range, are bent, 

Rise, and recede into the endless sea, 

Mammals have passed, while now her frequent glee 

Laughs in her highbred animalcula! 

But still, O still, 

Faint, unassuming will 

Thy questioning 

Whereon to string 

Hath a string more, 

To fling at the Mind's door, 

Whereon to play 

The shade and light, of endless night and day. 

The static cliffs that rise, and try to shape 

The lands into their breast — 

The tides that have escape 

By tendrils of the moon, which join their crest — > 

Are these not partings where the thoughts behold 

Her question .? As in flower, grass and tree, 

Moth, bee, 

:y*'.' " 



loo An Earth Poem 

Winged butterfly with sails of crimson gold, 

Bats blue as dawn, and mists that circle her, 

The sheep's white fur 

The camel's grey 

The lion and the leopard's spotted hind? 

Do these not come behind 

The Secret of the Secret? 

Yet— 

O yet not they! 

Their use is portioned to them, they imbue 

Force with an action, which they themselves renew, 

And seem to stand before the questioning Mind 

Through change, and mutability, as though 

With sauntering beat, that speeds the pulse of leisure, 

Their lives, into their evolutions went. 

And as a cloud over the Sun doth flow 

Or but is sent, 

The Secrets back into the Secrets go. 

They are from Heaven to Earth their own appeasure — 

And their own labour, strength omnipotent. 

Of man. 

The long stringed lyre puts on another string-^ 

The largened vortex has its apex — Can — 

The afternoon began to die in rose, 

Why on my love's lost body, should I seem 

To moralise upon the silent dream 

As does a surface current on the stream? 

Only the envy of the stars could move 

Dead presences to love. 

Or the death presence of a memory 

To muse upon the path trod towards its goal. 



Children of Air loi 

Thus, and thus she did, and thus she chose, 

The garment of her soul — 

That her least choice, upon the ear of time might sing, 

And be by somewhat more than circumstances heard. 

She listened, and the seas became the word 

That joined them to the lea. 

By her the bud was seen 

Before its stalk was green — 

In every atom, the insatiate stirred — 

She was the symbol of the century! 

The body's reign was broken, for its sense 

Was filled with milk of morning, and the need 

Through trammel of the parents, taught it whence 

Easy and supple could be found the seed. 

And soon 

Bearing the frequent grain 

The few hours, drenched 

By sightless Heaven in the dark's return. 

Led her to couch of sleep, whereon did burn 

The quiet of her soul, to draw it thence — 

To make it fain. 

And draw the fresh and crimson Life to noon 

Where daytime quenched — 

The noon's clear peak, of vantaged negligence. 

The surplus hours, which the tide did keep 

With watch of light, were dropped for other use, 

Save nutriment and sleep, 

Within the frugal crtise 

Exertion hovered, like a jewel deep 

Whose rays were passion, curiosity. 

Impulse towards other impulses unseen, 



102 An Earth Poem 

Before whose biceps, energy should flee 

To fresh invention and expression dear 

Of other import, save necessity. 

As if upon the carpet of the green, 

The over-burdened twilight should draw near. 

After she went, I lay beneath the trees, 

And covered all my body with the weight of their fresh hiding 

leaves. 
Of their material, their sexual leaves, 
Their pure leaves on the trees that hide the sky. 
It seemed as if beneath them I was free, 
I need not look above — nor He on me, 
No matter whether God or God should spy 
Upon the primal child of infancy! 
Nature, didst thou make me without ken 
Of this mad fancy of a Deity? 
O succour me, — O keep me, hold me then, 
Even if one of thy best loves, did die — 
Thy sweetest love that thou hast given me, 
Take, thou takest back, to be that paramour. 
Leave me without the stain 
The craving, born of the lost nuptial pain, 
In limbs and lips of mine, to find that judgment, which shall 

make me pure. 
O glad leaves, hung above before the Sun, 
Through ye, I may be as blind from these, 
— ^The feeling of the flesh, the thoughts that make 
My own tribunal, as ye love me, leaves! — 
O leaves, confess and tell me did ye run 
In Passion under now replenished break 
And gorgeous set, to meet the mouth of Night — 



Children of Air 103 

And far low hills not timing to the sky? 
O tell me all, your heritage of will, 

make me still, 

Let me have speech with something of my kind, 

Red, full with sap and blind, 

Unless, I die 

Torture me not, with pleadings of the light — 

1 do but hide myself, to seek the way — 

I let my fingers twine with all the grass — 

To learn, to know, how energies may pass 

I would forewatch the waters near the moon 

To spell the tidal change — and feel it chance 

But not, O not, to rise to Moon and Sun 

Or scale the vault, or hesitate on height. 

But leap from light to dark, from pulse to clay, 

To be wound round with Death's dear circumstance. 

To kiss the ancient antique Sod, and soon 

Return from Chaos of a Paradise, 

To the one Being who has made us one. 

Or where I have not even seen her eyes! 

The voice was ceased, and I lay waiting, won 

With the last thought, which is the thought of her — 

Then something parted — and at length had gone. 

The shadow of a presence dim as tears. 

Not love, nor self, nor pain, but on the grass 

A silence voiceful of unnumbered spheres, 

And far, and soon, 

One — one. 

Colourless splendour closed the gates of noon 

As drawing, the vault of a sepulchre 

A white hand would push through the bars, and pass. 



Ill 

children of Sun 

(night) 

A day has come at last to be withdrawn 

Children of Sun, the day that may be years — - 

For Clay, and Heart, have passed their ways of fears. 

The Soul is coming near us, and is won, — 

As thwart the afternoon, the seeds of night, 

Fell idly from the- red roof of the Sun, 

As falls a fountain in a mirrored cave 

Recalling to the day her western dawn. 

Then slowly, as when sorrow turns to tears, 

The dew descended, the last flowers of light 

Budded to burst and close, and when the dunne 

Succeeded crimson on the winged way 

Where palls the succulating twilight wave 

I knew, I knew no longer was the day. 

Then felt I in my pulses a strange change. 
The calling which Earth called, another causality — • 
As if my being were before her dawn. 
The force which made her life with mine agree, 
The part of void we were both set upon. 
The loop of dark which had around us range, 
The feel, the instinct, we could not estrange, 

104 



Children of Sun 105 

As round all births, doth cling the mystic night 

Intangible expeller unto light, 

Now here returned, to bid us to return 

To paths of dark, the twilight Sun should earn. 

The long day took his path across the sea, 

And as a peacock, trailed his train abroad, 

The west sky rnimicking the eastern rise 

Put on a robe of rose 

As for emprise. 

And sunk on the horizon as a lord. 

Breath faintly comes, and goes 

In birth, and death, and breathing faint with sighs — 

The scarlet turns to black, the twilight shades to both, 

The same procession of morn's pageant show, 

Willing it came, and willing it shall go, 

As doth all beauty round experiment 

Weave the lost symbol of the times intent, 

As rain fed clouds are the sky's ornament. 

As eve to day plighted her widowed troth ! 

Children of Air, we pass the gate that won 

The lumid apple of the twilight sun. 

How strange it was at length and last 

When to and fro the shadows on the grass 

Waved through the hours of day, and our Life's days 

Still held us to small purpose while amaze 

Kept our strained visage from the wistful past. 

Darkened the vision of the end, alas! 

Now it is come, no more in intent mute 
Must we dispel the music from our flute — 



io6 An Earth Poem 

All of the reeds that thatched the prisoned sprite 

Of outer voices, melt to sounds of night. 

No more the hidden, chidden, bidden way 

To use the passions, which our Souls gainsay — 

No more on nourishment, our famished want — 

Nor hands that raise the temple in the haunt — 

Within our effort in our wills default. 

Our eyes, at length are opened to the vault ! 

No peevish discontent of paltry prey — 

No marriages, or battles of the clay — 

No thatch roofed houses, where the noon's light fails 

A whimpering for tears or flaps for sails 

Can hide us from this dark, which over all prevails. 

The self control of custom is not ours. 

Children's complainings, stilled by wreaths of flowers, 

Nay, no replenished wreck's respective claim 

Which borders on the mooring of an aim. 

Only the night to quaff, to fold, to claim. 

But Heaven, not Earth, must hold the gladdened night 

For ever like a child, upon the bare 

Sweet fragrant bosom of her constant dream — 

Who drinks the milk of comfortless despair. 

Mixed with the fluid fire, passed in light 

For day, and still the patient creamy stream 

Of mother moonbeams, the white nutriment 

For the dim dark, that sucks and sucks in vain ! 

Here, but some hours we spend, grown black 

For purposes which clear day cannot share, 

Bearing forth Life, making most pregnant Life, 

While as a shuttle, through the webs of pain 

She has come on from hours of the dawn 



Children of Sun 107 

Has spilled her ire in the lap of noon, 

Dropping it there in orange as a boon 

Takes as if tiny threads of gossamer 

Our twilight's mists, for shading her design. 

What god could give her, her own selfish will 

Who has outgrown self, and knows no bliss 

Save as it ministers unto the way within her spill. 

Men's souls climb, through their vacant lives to her? — 

Their births, which are their fortitudes in strife 

Bring her great agony and supple, fine. 

Changes her atmosphere and makes her miss 

Its bounteous gladness, her day's bloom and scent, 

The mother of our souls, who turns her face 

Away from happiness, but to look back 

To the day's world, to see its race climb on, 

O, not so soon, — 

So soon for her as we, who interval 

Our struggle with deep joy, shall fall the grace 

Of Sunlight for each child. Her Sun is still 

Nay, more, while we do live, she has her chance 

To pity one and all. 

So we, when dark 

Begins to brood, and reign 

Across the sunset are upheld in trance of will — 

'T is like the spirit, for the covering 

Of action, veils the day of our design. 

We lose the feel of Sod, the sight of skies — 

The world drinks up itself in its decline — • 

And those who would be nearer Heaven rise. 

For there is more to give, or low, or high. 

The sun-dial fails to tell the hours' time. 

'T is only here by will of Earth we try 



io8 An Earth Poem 

Her loosure, without hark 

Of birds who to their nests have ceased to chmb — 

An inner Sun waits with us, for the thrill 

Of Nature's Sun which shall await this lark, 

Who shall arise and sing! 

Children of Sun! 

How did we find the next long vista of the ways we climb, 

We, whose hearts brought us Air, ere night sublime ? 

The Sod found Air by time. 

Is it a longer way we now must run 

As by the night we reach unto the Sun — • 

Or do the optic orbs, of eyes, by sight 

Of near things, and of gross things, lose their light 

To penetrate the crevices of height? 

Then turn the vibrate retina between 

The covered lids, re-see what we have seen — 

Take solar green in lieu of forest green — 

Then, there comes 

With blinded eyes, as unto voices dumbs 

In stillest closure, dark, as if a sea 

Ran on to a long light, or to infinity, 

Now crosswise are the lines as wave of cloud. 

Now perpendicular as in the dawn 

The dew from stranger spheres the sea pours on. 

We hunt, and hunt, the eyelash on the cheek 

The eye protecting lashes proving proud. 

For surely some light starts these lines abreach. 

Opening sight again to Earthly waves 

We behold with glad surprise, the Sun that staves 

So closely in the Heaven. Was it strange 

That we have missed Him, He that lends us eyes 



Children of Sun 109 

So that the world lying beneath Him lies 

Open to sight, as dreams of Paradise? 

Before what was the dark? What was his track? 

Without first, then within, lure held him back — 

All through the day, that might have been so bright, 

As to the woken Soul there seems the night 

The lure, and lore, and law 

Of what we saw — 

Forgive, it was the shadow of our own — 

As if a language out of its root grew 

To form the verb and noun, as one doth hew 

The shade of trees for fire — 

As what we sing, when grown 

Comes from the lyre, to be itself the lyre — 

So to behold the Sun it is we change 

Adding our change to time, more strongly even 

Than in the morn we Sod to Air did seek. 

And twine the form to heart, hunger to speech, 

As now before the next increase shall be 

We must re-see the Sun to let him free — 

Must moralise ourselves now, through the dim 

That seeing through him, we at last see him. 

The Sun, which every day has shown 

May be the Heavenly witness of our homes, 

O wind him — to us, in the Air, or Shroud! 

The lovely dark is coming. Lo ! at rim 

The Sun himself draws poor Earth up to him! 

As if the circle would be manifest 

With touch of breast. 

Not sought for, and represt, 

And surely, as on Sod the Air doth lie, 



no An Earth Poem 

It winds around the bosom of the sky — ■ 
It is a marriage band of Sod and Sun — ■ 

All Children ye are one — 
Sod, Air, and Sun! 

To habit, the last brillianting abode 
Perhaps Death, doth hide from sight, the sight of men, 
Then- 
Such do the mighty forces, which have strode 
On Him, whom all religions do aver 
And hushed, the man, who lies in sepulchre 
Is said to pass! 
But wanton thinkings err 
With miniature of truth bedecked, alas ! 
Although 

In probability, this thing is so. 

That Death doth lead the way which we must go — 
Still more at last with hope, we learn to know — 
What cometh unto us the times we grow. 

'T was said, in many a fable. 

Of stones the gods were made 

As white as snow. 

Then Egypt with her table 

Of crypt the man laid low. 

Embalmed and signed from winds that hither blow. 

That Hells might be surpassed, as water in their flow, 

So mortals might in Death behold this Sun-filled show, 

And should not fade. — 

The story is too long — 

Progression stable 

Sings on with ever antedated song 



Children of Sun m 

For Heaven, or for Peace, 

Majestic paeans sing o'er ears that cease. 

And graves are laid in ground 

With many a torturing sound — 

I mock not, for the days must have their round — 

And thought be wrong, at length that truth be found. 

But lo! two images diverse about me go 

While yet feet run 

To climb, the Sun 

And still moms break 

For his all burdened, consecrated sake. 

With insights see 

Twin images, awake the thought in me. 

For premises increase which onward tend 

To justify the reaches towards the end. 

And as Life lessens Substance' o'er fraught spell, 

Man doth about his inner being, turn 

As matter now seems energy, age well 

Collects its impulses, and outer sign 

But seems the symbol of the inner shrine. 

And young night makes Earth on a heavenly swell 

A consecrated oneness! 

And as in closed sea-shell the murmur and the colour 

Do one whole confess, 

I seem to mark the dolour 

Of Life, and Death, as one — 

So far as we may seek, the Soul, the Sun! 

And both the same, if we, as lamps for Heaven bum. 

Collateral the Body and the Soul! 
The Sod, the Sun — 
Can law diverge 



112 An Earth Poem 

Of active forces? Nay, I only urge 

Swiftness as change, 

Vibration to its goal! 

As swift to change in higher vibrance run 

Positive and negative in whole — 

As species which both back and forward range, 

Or limestone is as stone or yet as lime — 

Death is a change, but cannot range 

Since the departing spirit, lessens weight 

Somewhat of Body, with its purpose-freight, 

And by a law more strange 

For less accepted by the Mind at large, 

Growth of the Soul in Life, with purpose high 

Negative turns as Death, Life to the sky. 

I purpose but to aid Philosophy — 

I hold that Science more doth stimulate 

Functions of matter, for its own insight, 

Than would sesthetics let the Soul in-state 

By action its own right 

Of growth, without Death, to a betterment — 

A certain losing of material of brain migrate 

As Death lends to all Souls the sight to rise 

For both are stimulants and all vibrate, 

Now in the thinking of the Mind of Fate ! 

And if we will it so, shall fostering Time 

With Life and Death, as charges on his sea 

Take both the live and dead Souls, in his barge 

Through individual progress up the skies 

Or down, as they themselves their wills have bent. 

They bury One, unfit to buried be, 
Ungrown in lighting of Life's sacrifice! 



Children of Sun 1 1 3 

Earth has her own surmise! 

It is a scene of mocking majesty, 

To impel him to lie with the low Sod at ease — 

Death means not how, but when! 

Around the grave, the sentinel of trees. 

The bugle calling winds, like echoes then. 

The pageant of a grave, and lovelier love 

Has let the limbs be quiet. Clouds above 

Gather and film, as sweetly as at birth 

The little changure shifting of the Earth, 

As if a garment falling to her knees, 

The shroud of State 

About this sudden portent 

Hangs with weight 

Down from the shoulders; the lips close, 

Vermilion strength, as closing of day's rose, 

And tongue and eyes that speak not are migrate, 

O fair, 

No matter what before has been the face, 

Sleep lies upon the individual hair, 

And then content 

Unpantheistic, being unified, 

By constant light, brought sight its grace. 

Life-giving pregnancy thus deified — 

Since thou, O Sun, 

Wilt no more cheer the Air to meet this breath. 

Let it climb on, unto thee, to abide; 

Hast thou not won 

Enclosure of thyself, whose cease is Death ? 

If motion be thy pulse, as to this world 
A motion higher, on such wills, augment 

8 



114 An Earth Poem 

As cease to place themselves between thy light, 

Volitioned or involutant, by urge 

Of thine and Nature's static held intent, 

Pollute them in thy glory, and ferment 

Thy faster running vibrants, thine acclaim 

Of glow that falls on flame! — 

For since a will was in them hibernate 

To rise or fall, through Earth grow sloth, or swift 

Thou must account their speed, with thine to lift 

Their Will and Purpose, to thy Light and Strength, - 

As sluggard tides have not fast waters held 

Though on the incline of thy quicker verge 

They may beat back to Earth and round her shame 

Unwillingly by thee resume a state 

Loath, low, and eddy in abyssmal tide. 

In will-less dread, more dire than the night, 

Choose of themselves to wait 

About a lesser Life, whose sands they sift, 

While those who live, attuning hourly 

Their pulses unto thine shall nearer be, 

Who in the flesh need not more hesitate 

But with it round their souls inviolate — 

Pregnate their purpose to thee. 

And to what is thine, at length! 

The second image riseth, 

One, doth stray 

In open arms of Life, and would gainsay 

Nothing which is of use, but still doth try 

To breathe the higher Air, to walk the Sun, 

With eyes of sapphire and of sunset dunne, 

He is exalted more than they who die ! 



Children of Sun 115 

Here, the slow pulses of a nether Earth 

Beat with the swiftness of a heavenly birth — 

And so combining rhythm, make the same. 

O Sun it is not that we die to claim 

Thy given being! — No sphere can withhold 

Progression to the striving! Wills, contend 

The eyes to sight of thee, and manifold 

Both live and dead with reaches to thy light 

All may come near thy couches through the night 

As thou thy being unto him surmiseth, 

And draw for thee the end! 



So Thought to thee, freed from the mortal bound 

Of wisdomed long fragility I turn, 

As black night pitches o'er thee lamps to burn ' 

To ask thee to absorb thyself in Soul — 

It is a willing errand, for long urned 

In fragmentary purpose' quivering heart 

— Unmutial kindness — thou thyself discerned. 

Day had not satisfied thy retributive whole. 

Nor taken from thee all that thou couldst give, 

Nor let thee, even live, such as thou art, 

Untraversed by the fruitage thought of past 

Ripened from thee, man-strewed along thy way. 

Thou art as witful now, as all thy sway. 

At last thy throbbing is by answer found 

Long held to ground! 

Thou hast a kingdom of thyself at last 

Invisibly vast! 

Thou hast a borderless and moving goal! 

Naught of world severance can longer spurn 



ii6 An Earth Poem 

The Knowledge, and the Love, where thou shalt live 

Thou hast thy mate on paramourial cloud! 

Thy lord is in the spirit of thy vow! 

The sky night twist of ethers are thy shroud, 

Thy panacea breathlessly is now! 

Thou hesitatest not, thou art at ease ; 

No veil of outworn fact is round thy dear lips' curve! 

O, instantaneous thou! 

O, witless please! 

Tumultuous guardless swerve : 

With Sun, and seas 

Of Skies, thou hast departed, doth depart! 

Yet, all the days 

The humanising Sun 

Doth let his rays 

Around this planet run! 

O sad, mad Thought, O Soul, thy foster child; 

Even the force which makes thee free and wild 

Must somewhat be returned and be defiled! 

And yet thy speech is with thee, thou hast cried 

Thy fervour into ears, that have replied! 

Art thou not satisfied? 

Thy lips have had their drink, of golden whim! 

Of orange tutelage, of tittering brim! 

Thou art immersed in antenatal swim! 

Come and repillage Time! 

Touching thy old world rim 

Follow the shadow of thy force sublime! 

For here, at last seems arch and end of dreams, 



Children of Sun 117 

This blackened night, that has no calhng streams, 

This silenced, onyxed sepulchre where day 

Buries all human love, and here at least 

If there be sacrament, only, one priest 

Shall guard the fane of longing — ^who is God 

No more, shall be the hunger for the Sod, 

Nor any human heart across our way. 

Nor any love to trammel nor to die. 

Nor any love to torture and to sway. 

Nothing to seek for, which shall pass us by. 

No merchandise or commune which might be 

Irrevocably lost, 

No brightness slipped aside. 

No Life, no Impulse, and no Passion crossed, 

No seeking for the grace which should abide. 

No pleading and no cry. 

No empty and relentless ecstasy, 

No vanguard of long sense, with musk and sweet 

Carried across the desert, with parched feet, 

No blight where winter's snows have not been set, 

No moaning autumn decked in russet red, 

No silent music, and no dews unwet, 

No sleep which is an anguishment instead, 

No shallow which for drowning is not deep. 

No human travail lest it be closed sleep. 

No mountains which their hiding promise keep, 

No thing to chide us, as we strive to creep 

Into our foldment, lasting as the dead — 

Is this thy conceit of the night of loss? 

Heaven, the Oriole sings above the grave. 

And chirps as willingly about a cross 

As if young lovers plighted. 



ii8 An Earth Poem 

There doth save 

As for childbirth, each star astrology. 

Comes in happy crowd 

Clouds reunited, 

And if the vault entire were aloud, 

It would the blindest eyes, have spiritually resighted. 

But is night in the soul of Death entire ? 

At thought of this, the Word would close its lyre. 

And night, young, beautiful for her intent 

Of inner Life, through darkness silent bent 

Find Sun of Soul to keep her dim content. 

The outer darkness lends to inner sight 

Or live or dead, within the vault of night 

Higher than Earth, O higher in the spill 

That lends the Sky and Earth a single will. 

And yet, with stranger lure 

Another vision comes, it spreads on lofty sky 

Its own engravure 

And its signalry 

Breaks forth with voice of child as well should be 

In newest oldest Heaven a low cry 

Breaks from the small lips pure! 

And on the dark abyss 

Falls meaning of the world, as so to kiss 

The past and present ages, into bliss! 

The faint child calls down all the Halls of Peace 
Waking the dead from tomb and sepulchre, 



Children of Sun 119 

Then comes the sounds of dimness, and hearts' pall 

As if the dead were risen with their wound — 

Each sound 

Breaks like a pallid lily on the Air. 

The child's lips tremble, and seem ages pale 

Touched by the grey smoke, from the hills, and vale, 

And Stygian rivers, and encircling field. 

As if the awestruck ages, could not yield 

Their dead at once unto the climbing Lair! 

As if, though some are waiting, yet not all 

The souls could cast away their graves and cease, 

And still they rose, now slowly, and now more, 

Coming like vapours through the call of Time — 

Some trembled, and some seemed to circle arms 

In hesitant purple mists, heavy like tears — 

Had they left loves and passions in the biers? 

"Were they afraid again of tinged form 

Fearing rebirth, or some Life as before 

Which should have strength, e'en to make essence mourn 

By which, they were to reach, now the sublime? 

Retracting to their fear, their Life, their Harms — 

Some seemed to shudder at the vault above, 

Nor eddied sweetly swayed, as if by prayer 

With others, who clomb high having no fears, 

Some seemed remembrous of love — 

As over sound! 

Some could not seemingly forget their will 

More lasting than the crumbling bones, or mold 

Laid in the passing clay, from which they came 

But were afraid, afraid of Heaven still — 

Some seemed in their grey shrouds as burning flame — 

Some seemed even in vapours to have eyes 



I20 An Earth Poem 

That feared the touch, of some illusive gold. 
The fragrance of some starlight, in the skies — 
And yet they clomb the ether round, in round 
Rise, after rise. 
Vagrant Sun Children, into Paradise! 

The child called once more down the Halls of Peace 

And on the strength and dark his voice grew loud, 

Welling his pass through the invisible 

He could not cease! 

It seemed the night should mirror all the world, 

Should draw its secrets from it, pluck its pain, 

Make all historic dooms a little leaf 

That crumbled, and was naught, 

Was suddenly encaught. 

Wound in a shroud, 

The willing, and unwilling closely held 

Abortion-thought which hung within the womb 

Of old Belief, 

And Heaven and Hell 

Crush into fragment ere the morn again. 

It is its only goal ; 

The Soul 

Moves now, no longer is it still. 

It wars to have its will, 

It wars to droop upon the lilies' breast, 

It struggles down to meet, to clasp, to hold. 

To see, and to be seen, 

It clutches at the portals of the screen, 

It would be felt, it draws the Body nigh, 

Now one sense deadens, now the others try, 



Children of Sun 121 



It is like Death 

Since it would have us die. — 

Yet not, for see it yields us of its breath, 

It would but have us cry 

The urgent need to falter, and to lean 

Upon the vapours' arm, 

And now between 

The visitation of the good, and harm, 

As birds learn how to fly 

Around the templed, lilied gold 

Aye — 

It falls, and takes upon itself our mould ! 

Higher, and higher. 

As if energies 

Resupplemented shell 

Material — • 

Should be. 

Should waft upon the wind, where we aspire 

And beat our hearts, as if their tuned bell 

Should ring the great exalted song of "Shall," 

Until we gain our Heaven, or our Hell. 

But watch the passage is of narrow shape 
In which we fight ourselves, the Animal, 
And mirrored on the bulwark broods an ape — 
The Senses which were crutches of the Mind 
Circle to dust, and all is Astral! 
Light doth increase. 

We are assumed by pregnant angelhood, 
There can be no escape. 
No long ceased mood 



122 An Earth Poem 

To garb our bodies in, where once they stood 

No function to respire, 

No stranger custom beat 

Of warmth, or heat, 

No thirst for dew, or fire, 

We have fulfilled the last great link in space. 

The passage through 

Children of Sod, of Air, 

We do embrace. 

The secret omnipresence lost, and won, 

Whose war is Peace, 

Ultimate Peace to find. 

Whose war is peaceful kingdoms of the Sun! 

The child is gone — 

Again we seek alone, 

The glint of Sun'has shone — 

The great excessive message of his tone ! 

To ye who live, I sing my song of Sun — 
My song of Soul's expression — 
My songs which on the pinions of lights run 
When to compression 
One only good abideth — 
One reposition — 
One fondness past discretion — 
One last past lesion — 
One motive which most hideth — 
After so long the day of fullest need 
Has fallen upon ye to bind, and bleed — 
One sacrament which has no nether creed- 
One foldment back from whence ye once have come 
Experienced and dumb — 



Children of Sun 123 

For ye, who long have stood the fray of day, 
And would not longer stay, 
Or would have ease which shall not pass away, 
Or with still yearning arms would hope for more. 
Let god be yours, who rose from morning's floor 
And now at evening kneeleth as before, 
The One who travels from the east to west, 
The One by whom we see, whose meed of rest 
A tiredness of lives repealed yearns for. 

Yet still why, must my Soul unemptied lie 

Beside the bosom of a harmony? 

I look upon a chart that is not Heaven, 

And see the purple veins that make a river. 

And watch the pale blue oceans as they die 

Sand dune and cliff, 

And mountains as they rise, 

Surely I am not wise? 

Backward I turn empirical surmise, 

With stress and shif , 

The globe lies in the pale hand of the Giver, 

And rivers to their sea, 

— ^To immortality — 

Carry the cargo of the human, even — 

As all the rivers of the space, the stars 

In golden commerce to unknown bars! 

Yet O, to me 

Ere I pass on, omnipotent, glad Soul 

Back to the replaced goal 

Comes homely hunger of the Earth, to free 

Her beastial breasts of milk, that she may be 

No longer Mother but Infinity. 



124 An Earth Poem 

Mad emptied song, and where do Nations go 

That drop their foam, like petals here below? 

The while each individual Soul may soar. 

Where are the seeds that Babylon did sow? 

Where lost Sidon, and Myrrh their citadels? 

And Keva's walls that yield not still their store, 

And all the ancient infidels? 

The Eastern Islands that I may not know? 

Away with Empires' mutability 

Of past utility, 

Such seeds as had an early pregnancy — 

Gone in a wind's extancy 

Gone in a wind which all the seeds must blow — 

And all the pollen's unsurrendered trust 

It cannot all be dust. 

For seems to me, from out the bartered show 

Of Sorab and of Rostrum 

Blue to Castilian hills, that there the folk 

Of kindred heartbeats woke. 

Like a lost Asian drum, 

There every sea 

Which tossed on Ceylon, Greece, and Italy 

Has left the flotsam of the hidden clay. 

For do I e'en there stray. 

And feel the import of cohesiveness. 

As in the halls of Northern great Savoy 

I hear the bells of story ring for joy. 

The story and the glory passed away — 

Carthage and Judea still have left their spray 

That washes on Gibraltar's opened door. 

And do confess. 

The tides of tideful water, ever more. 



Children of Sun 125 

Then all the flowers drop in Arcady, 

Russia and England drink as from the bowl 

Of the North Pole, 

Winds from the South-west seas are blown North 

And curve around the sheaf of North Sea's Bay, 

There ice leaps forth 

Till all the North-west blossomed in a day. 

The pollen drops on California, 

The dust of gold blows to Siberia, 

Sweden has risen in her own strange way. 

Shall the North Sea 

And Norway spot the Sun? — 

Still weep for these, 

As August for the flowers of her May, 

Or shall the fruitage of the Southern lands 

Make recompense for flower dust of strands 

Which still must be forgotten? 

Lo! the whole 

Divisibly begotten 

Great Earth, is like a flower of man's Soul, 

And her Countries ! 

Why does the large Equator swing her girth 

Still round the red breasts of the Mother Earth? 

The pomegranate still shall have its pole — 

But it is later past the Earth's July, 

Some flowers bear their blossoms, and then die — 

The while their dust with others, which survive 

Make all the fruitage of the Autumn live, — 

The seeds sprinkle on Greenland, Labrador; 

The north Sun, on the ice-girt pole hath gleamed 

As ruddy rind on skins of apples seemed 

When Adam dreamed ; 



126 An Earth Poem 

Nay, all the spotted pall 

Of the North Isles is pulp of Tamarind. 

For fruit, the flowers have blossomed, and decay 

For fruitage life has waited and has sinned. 

Then let the Sun's ecliptics lay them way 

For all. 

Great stars of Heaven, whose nightly magnitude 

Leaves your white bodies nude — 

Come teach us with your trance. 

Teach stellar ice 

The sacrifice, 

The long forgotten young aged moon's romance, 

How bloodless for the world she clomb the skies, 

No longer I surmise — 

E'en so, Earth's- vapours to the leaning Sun 

Shall sacrificial run 

As the baptismal streams of Paradise! 

Souls of an hour 

Behold, 

The flower 

Is gold, 

The sphere has rolled 

For ever to her own, O wake, arise 

Chaldean, Thotme, Greek, East Indian 

Behold your clan! 

Transmuted in all graves, the life stuff lies — 

And by eternal resurrections prone 

Through bodies and still bodies more, alone 

The last completed Soul shall find her own? 

'T is but for ye the barter of a span 



Children of Sun 127 

A nation, age, time, purpose, woman, man, 

Which did assume your naked entities 

And your identities — 

And working through them all, made the Earth flower 

Bloom for ye through her hour, 

With passion, sense, ignorance, potencies 

Consistencies, 

All these were but for ye — 

And while there hangs the dome as still a mirror there may be 

Each seen, passing through them all 

As to their pall! 

Like a great eagle, o'er the darkened waves 
I ride contagions of myself through life — 
Small swells of reason, measured distance rife — 
Or follow gods who sing from echoing caves — 
Glimmerings of the visions, which but fade 
In soaring towards a hidden ultimate — 
Some yearnings thus, and passions satiate — 
My open wings which soar the seas thus made — 
Then in the morning from the nest of Time 
I gather legends, breaking into foam 
Wherein I dip my parched wings uselessly, 
And wait to see 

These in the moonlight of the evening climb 
To seek a closure in the vaulted dome. 
Till I exalt myself through night and day 
Leaving my nest hung breathlessly midway! 

What benediction makes of injured Peace 
A compensation, in the realms of prayer? 
When all through Body, Mind and Soul increase. 



128 An Earth Poem 

Alike around the angel of despair 

A shroud, that she may wear 

When Heaven draws her back into its light 

That she — even she, Mistress of earthly gain upon the night 

When fire shall consume feigns, faints, and snare. 

Stand judgment with the Angel in her sight! 

The time has come for slaughter, and for prayer, 

But was it not so in the kilns of care 

In procreation? 

What bitterment has fallen to our share 

Of blood for blood, and raging fight for ties 

Of Life to Life, that still — has still defied 

The unfranchised Heaven with her eyes, 

To gaze on Peace from belted nation to nation 

Drinking her foster mother's milk in pride? 

A shadow like a dim plague walks abroad, 

Holding no vain, vague suppliant hands to God, — 

Neither with eyes that well the tears of Time 

Making obeisance, in a lowly guise, 

Unto some self creation over Air. 

But still, more over- wise 

We would at once gather to the sublime. 

Again comes war 

But here, now to devise 

The garb of Spirit to its own franchise, 

For long the spotted sign, the Spectre bore 

The banner for the will to mutinise — 

And Atheism waiting at the core — 

Sours the fruit, which we have gained before 

Whether God be an actuality 



Children of Sun 129 

Or a surmise ! 

We who have gained heart from, the flesh grown wise 

And still must have the Soul for our satiety, 

And have the red Sun, where the vine of yore 

Clambered as now, for see 

We grow, we mount, we rise! 

The red vine 

Which ran beside the Sod 

Would now drink up the skies, and still run on 

In flaming torture. 

That which in the dawn 

The creviced children saw, 

Now grown to twine 

Not seed, nor pod. 

But all the sweet corruptions of all law, 

Drag its besmitten purpose 

Through the sore, 

Till there bleed 

Nations, in ruin. 

As if the world itself became a seed. 

As if through some belated aperture 

Or stagnant foss. 

The instinct sent by cosmic impulse nigh, 

The leopard, and the lion, and the bruin. 

Had come from out the Mind, that pinioned high 

Still bears the Earth's collateral womb, upon 

Whose pregnancy such sordid instincts lie. 

As devastations, storms, disasters, war. 

Watch how its leaves 

Like hammers rise, and fall, 



I30 An Earth Poem 

Fretted by north wind of their circumstance, 

And trance, 

Athirst for pestilence — 

And consequence! 

Man bleeds, to call 

Himself a victor. 

Gathering unto sheaves 

His sword blood's harvest, 

Lacerate, infest! 

Is the wound Need? 

Or Need in torn tatters, but the wound? 

Bloodless the outworn faiths, lie on the ground 

Inert of any more supreme intent, to heed 

The faces turn to Heaven with their plea. 

And all the bugles stop their mouth of sound. 

Some tired PurpDse surely here let free 

A venom, on the world — ■ 

A great unrighteous parting of the breed — 

For war itself necessitates a foe, 

The hands that held 

The hilt, 

Or open face 

Of unsheathed blade . 

Now withered hence 

Must know, 

The guilt 

Who made 

Intense 

The voice who knew the war song of his race. 

Yet, on the scarred shore 

Yet spot the dragon and the leopard more, 

The devious tongues are still ; 



Children of Sun 131 

And still the place 

Which holds the swollen trenchment of the dead, 

Stilled is the storm 

By slackage but of will, 

The vine leaps up and clambers overhead — 

Closer, and closer, cling the still live clan — 

A dim light stills the face of argument — 

Was the most spacious war 

Conceived by man. 

For purpose of the world? 

Growth of fruition or futurity? 

For like a wave upon an iron sea. 

It crests and foams, once more fain 

It sets its giant feet 

Above the stilled religions on the main 

Which it has felled. 

What can secrete 

The torture amid those who live, with form 

Of shadows, burial and doom? 

There must be leash, some better thing to gain — 

Lest Patience hang her tears, upon the tomb 

And Pity be with blinded dim eyes bent! 

Higher, the vine grows 

Trellised by the will. 

Further 't will spread 

Its sacramental woes. 

Faiths on faiths are lying among the dead — 

More bastioned armies join the leaguered foes — 

Each wind doth veer the way that the vine goes — 

Now North and South, now East and West, where head 

The mighty seas, 



132 An Earth Poem 

To wither, and further still. 

Now joined to it the labour of the bees — 

Then doth dragoon, 

The urge grows more, and unto more is rolled, 

The hearts unbled grow less — 

Armies on mutilated armies swoon, 

The purpose, yea, what purpose can unfold 

The torn and mighty strife, 

And leave a mould 

In which may still be felt the feel of life? 

I mark a fortress 

Lured from nether deep. 

My spirit there calms souls that are asleep. 

Wakes like a gong 

The import of my song, 

Rises and seems to bless 

The bleared proximity of right and wrong, 

Goes through the gate 

Between the gun eye holes, 

Watches the heavy weight 

The powder rolls. 

Seems as it sat alone in mighty state, 

Again alone, where it could meditate 

On war as Fate! 

Sees the chaotic system in the plan — • 

Marks in it deaths that sanctify fresh birth — 

Holds winter on the snow encumbered Earth — 

For now again the lap of plenty fills 

The fruits of dearth — 

Watches fresh streams from once polluted rills— 

And temples unto Mammon, set anew 

As lilies tall nurtured alone on dew — ■ 



Children of Sun 133 

And domes that form like globules of the Air — 

Sees 

All repurged and more upon the view — 

War is for Earth, then let it pass! — 

But wait, — 

The rolling hemispheres cast wide their gate 

To meet the Sun. 

And it shall fall that crime 

Is but the surplus energy of Time. 

And yet, alas 

He runneth fast who cannot with us stay — 

There are corrupt abortions, which dismay 

The promise of his later foster child. 

Till see, he groweth nobler by heredities, 

Loosens his veins and lets the vampire wild 

Of War 

Once more. 

Feed on his later kin, 

— The revolutions purged, of blood filled skin — 

His cheek grows whiter as to meet in kind 

The lower Lily of his rebuilt mind — 

And War himself, a quieter disguise 

Has won. 

His criminalities besmirch 

The cheek of custom, which one time was fair. 

His alien search 

Grows steadfast, towards the long predestined line — 

He would all things regather and refine — 

As if the pith of some sweet new fruit lay 

Beneath the bramble vine — 

Fresh faiths like beakers, drinks, and casts away 

Sunburnt as deserts, 



134 An Earth Poem 

Lands about whose clay, 

A great Deism like a central noose 

Makes uninhabitable 

Such tabitable, 

Such he hazards, 

Then plunging under Atheisms loose. 

Places his blades in Doubts of gaunt array. 

That tell not of his coming, nor dismay, 

And what still Lifelike land 

Is civilised 

With impregnated zeal 

Lies trembling, in his hand — 

Agnostic structures mingle, and congeal, 

And spread awide again, the changing clan 

The stars surmised — 

Their eye averts 

For War is Man ! 

The vine is forked, it clambers once again 

In trellises of pain, 

Now from the parent ground 

Unloosed is free. 

To watch what it may be, 

To sleep and hear a sound, 

Be dumb still speak. 

Find odour in a note, 

Have feel within a lifeless marble set, 

Draw fire from the cool of prisms' vent. 

Grow thirsty without throat, 

Then drink the wet 

Moisture that keeps the Soul's environment. 

Hear its faint sounds as winds in a frail tree. 



Children of Sun 135 



Keep all its pulses yet grow dark, 

And weak, 

And hark 

Behind the rustle of the Mind's black screen, 

The Soul puts forth, unseeable, unseen. 

The Mind 

Is in the Battle's midnight tent. 

It paces as a sentinel of War, 

Inside its opened door. 

And sees the starlight glitter on the floor. 

Without lie all the forces, it has bent 

To its own use. 

That it has taught to lay it low 

As out of streamless oceans, rivers flow, 

Or out of harmony the dissonant — 

Doth rioting sounds supplant. 

For once a subtle regency it planned 

Weaving the war vine to a coronet, 

Tutoring forces from it, till at length 

Growing with strength. 

To make the circle weave a perfect band 

The brow to bind. 

While thereupon was set 

Impulse, at self-command — 

Which mutinised against it, to forget 

Its lien. 

How it had first-birth for its own abuse. 

Then must again the Mind with kingly mien 

Once more do battle, with its children's fret 

With their incongrument, 

As all the streams run backward to the sea, 



13^ An Earth Poem 

As if it argued its own argument, 
Grafting the untoward crown from Mutiny, 
Warring its diverged pulses, as a foe. 

For here, the ground vine grows 

But growing mounts, 

And mounting fades. 

And fading mounts again to higher glades, 

All intertangled with the rues of War, 

The nebulous creeping, constant parasite. 

Working its own despite. 

From red, to white. 

From white, to ghostly purple at its core. — 

Its weaved petals, stains that Stoics wore — 

Its closing foldment that which is the Mind — 

Passing the torrents, falling from its founts. 

Now lost in lonely caves. 

Now fiinting waves. 

Nor yet it wins but wind 

Now shuddering up a dismal depth of height — 

Now eddying into ghostly wills afraid 

Of motion and of light, 

It is all laid 

Upon the slender shoulders, of the Soul ! 

Mounting upon the Purpose, of the Whole! 

Yet, Children of the Sun, my tongue of faith 

Rumours of portents first disconsolate — 

For many lives, I feel, that we must sow 

To reap the single harvest of our fate. 

That we are gathered where the four winds blow. 

To numberless bodies come, and crave inmate, 



Children of Sun 137 

To all the ages, the world's ta.bles show, 

And natural sun-dials of the hours state. 

Until regenerated from wraith, to wraith, 

From out our wanderings, we somewhat still shall know. 

Shells of my Soul, how many have ye been? 

Where were ye nurtured, on what ocean tossed? 

What nations frequented, what wanderers seen? 

What globes inherited, what garbs, what screen? 

What many strange and diverse fortunes held 

That now between the Earth and Sun do lean 

My thoughts which have been traversed with the world? 

This, is not Oriental pedantry. 

Nor springs it, from across Nirvana's sea, 

It is my life, that sends such faith to me. 

To measure with an equal darkened eye — 

The Past with the eterne Futurity — 

Since one magnetic drop upon the Now 

Splashes the blinding drop, from which I die — 

The Sun has other systems where to light 

His hidden sight — 

His world repelled, Janosial replica — 

The systems of the Heavens are abridged 

To the close reading of Earth's fugitive, 

As if Time's Ocean of Man's Mammalia 

Refused the answer " Whither" with the " How," 

Until the seas at last shall be pillaged 

By the cognition that we only live! 

And nought can ere be lost — 

Atoms of pre-existence melt and merge — 

The air is chaos' Archaeologist — 

We totter with twin feet upon the verge — 



138 An Earth Poem 

With twin eyes see, with twin ears hear — 

And list 

Stratas of selves, whose burials we resist — 

Yet, somewhere is the axis of the sphere, 

Some faint day must our generations show 

Halved on the crescent of their own eclipse. 

To me, it is when no more nether woe, 

Nor outer pain can lead the Soul amiss, 

For this I live, for this my long parched lips 

Eat silently, the sands heredical — 

And do forego the Heavens' anointed kiss- 

Because the faint dews of my sorrows fall 

Upon the tarnished globe, terrestrial. 

Gathered to self, with stars so few and small 

I watch the sunlight down the west decline 

Contentedly, 'knowing it seeks for mine — 

Some other space where I must surely go — 

In following the reconstructed cheer. 

Mark how the symbols through the blackness shine, 

This outward life is mine, this one is thine. 

This is my face, mine eyes, mine arm, my hand. 

My brow and arm arterial, 

Yet all into one dust must intertwine 

And this rising again, shall recombine ! 

Yet what grave law between material 

Cohesive matters and the Spirit stand 

The Ghost of Semblance! Consecrated Form! 

As if the rain replenished in the storm 

Upon another lift of Air should wait. 

One, in re-purposing a new estate 

From which the Spirit led forth with much ease 

Its squandered habitude, for such as these 



Children of Sun 139 

Its integrating bodies should replace — 

Yet grows no rose the same, in form and face 

But uses the use-matter of its shape 

To let an instinct born of death escape 

Which nurtures not the spirit of its husk. 

No human bones the same, regather, me! 

A new verse comes with every song's refrain! 

A fresh note re-establishes its key ! 

And something parts which coming back again 

Accepts her varied mutability — 

A perfume makes the roses' squandered musk! 

An added thought gathers the vampire breath! 

And what is seed of Life is seed of Death! 

Till, as the flame regenerates a fire 

His own identity which must expire 

Alone by the addition of its hire. 

Yea every time, a spirit doth return 

Its taper on sidereal Earth to burn, 

It has an added wisdom to its lot — 

Therefore, alone, Fatality is not — 

Nor can a sire leave his entity 

In any willing soul, who would be free — 

For all addition, as a chemical 

Shall spot the small walls of the simplest cell! 

And Spirit above Matter, complicate 

The impulse, and o'er governed growth of Fate! 

O let my soul, in each ecliptic ray 

Attain fresh wisdom, that at length which may 

Not be for others, but itself indeed 

In others' clay — 

To shatter other Need! 

Not faster than an Atom goeth God, 



I40 An Earth Poem 

Nor swifter than a climax dies the Sun, 

As Earth progresses we progress to shun 

The evils which await us in the Sod, 

The path dissimilar has end the same — 

Even as doth the fire and the flame — 

Earth works through us, as we may work through Earth, 

She bears us all, from tired birth to birth. 

While individuality goes silent through 

All, which it blends her to imbue, 

That years, which bring mortality, and use. 

The Sphere's breast, make and break, but cannot choose. 

To form with all discrepancies, and justice thus — 

That we may meet her, and her course meet us. 

inner, hidden Will, I cannot see 

1 know that I "am taken to agree 

With what is mine for what mine own shall be! 

Ye who suffer, come, the night is black 

None, save the Secret, knows your agony 

But ah! dear waiting Ones, ye turn not back — 

Ye cannot, for the Secret has the key. 

O, unto all and all eternity, 

Be it for joy, or suffering, at last 

The Future comes — ^ye cannot have the Past. 

Bend down upon a glad adoring knee, 

Listen! ye shall hear — 

The chains swing on each year. 

Nay, bolted is the nether hemisphere. 

And lo! its chains encompass even ye. 

Till one more anguish flung, upon your Soul 

Shall let ye pass an unpermitted goal 



Children of Sun 141 

Accumulate a change, 

Until ye range 

Your bated Aura, and your Aureole! 

How many, many years the birds sing on, 

O, caged bird of the world sing on and out — 

O, changeling bird! 

O, long has been immersed in truth by dawn — 

Linked between all sight and sight is sound, 

Beauty has sung her image to the ground. 

And now the truths of natal notes appear 

To wing their way into the inner sight. 

Let every Soul fold his broad cadence clear 

And pierce with yearning float, the vault of night! — 

The Word is evet w^aiting to be heard. 

Although a beauty marvellous was caught 

And symbolled in the flesh, as Portent-thought, 

The higher climbing Sun, will be too bright 

For human eyes to gaze upon unwound. 

In silences is sound — as Faith is Doubt. 

Not yet can I pass on, for I must say 

The darkness light, 

Before I pass away. 

With the Sun Children, to the couch of day — 

The morn is breaking in the mauve midnight, 

The onyx is all bright, 

But further still — O, it must be the Soul 

That shall communicate, the lighted Whole! 

The passing onward to the perfect ray 

Join then all hours, in your dance of black, 

Hide your face stars that guide in re-dismay^ 



142 An Earth Poem 

Turn the great frugal sleep, of bodies back 

To hunger, and to thirst, 

That still the first 

Material instinct reign, and then a sway 

The Children of the Sod, with Air for breath — 

The Children of the Air, with evening's fall — 

For be it Life, or Death, 

It is for all. 

The Soul that leads unto the gated Sun 

And has the path rewon. 

The child calls once more down the Halls of Peace !- 

But now he wakes the Present to increase 

The wonderment for the miraculous! 

He calls, and calls, even the Sun Child thus! 

His voice awakes the woken slumberous ! 

Shriller, and shriller, on tympanum years 

He beats the moving sunburst, of the spheres! 

And makes the hearts which shriek in silence thrill 

The voids across the caught-predestined Will! 

All of the Nations, as if chords of wind 

Flap their mast sails to thunder in behind. 

The spirit army winged with impulse throws 

A shade as if a million evenings grew 

At once, out of the shadow of the rose — 

And images of all religions came 

And lay amongst them as a tongue of flame, 

Little Krishna, Buddha, Zeus, and Christ, 

Them unto whom the less gods sacrificed 

Gautama, Sinto, Janos, Odin, Thor, 

And he who in a casket of old lore 

Sailed down the Nile beside the Pyramid — 



Children of Sun 143 

The Malay and the Slav, the Greek, the Dane. 

Till lastly came to dwell among the crew 

Upon the tottering fane 

At portals 

One, who his eyeballs hid 

Until into the quiet night they slid 

To give the place for mortals, 

The coloured pagans, lemon, bronze, and red, 

The white Caucasian, and the Indian bred 

Among the pines and cedars, sleek of tread 

Alive and dead, in growth or pall. 

Some breathing tenderly, 

A child asleep upon a mother's breast, 

A man who w^anders 'neath a star-branched tree 

Making a sport with his imaginings — 

A monk at wineful prayer of celibacy — 

A woman's pillowed face beneath her hair — 

A grave's uncouth and yearning occupant — 

Those out at sea who hear the ocean's chant — 

Those lonely in the desert — 

These astert! 

Those who wear 

The leaves about the wood for garment dress — 

The lover whom the maiden doth confess — 

The grandsire and the granddame beautiful — 

Here are their souls! Behold the sky is full! 

They have come out to meet the midnight, all! 

They cannot be at rest 

There doth assert 

Within their being, fanning of such wings 

As may be symbol of their upward flight! 

The question down the long nights' echoes' rings, 



144 An Earth Poem 

The Sun along the long Dawn's seaside swings, 
It is not answered yet, not answered quite. 
Come Children of the Sun, I change my tune 
I carry to my lips the horn of moon — 
Since on the path so many questions fell 
'T were best, to doubt, than to be Gabriel. 
Light passes through the sunlight as a shell, 
And now the dark 
Is left alone, to hark 
To hollow wakening of the sleepless lark. 
And still they gather, they will mount the Sun! 
They ride him from the ocean down the sea — 
To where mists fall, above the lower sky 
They have not passed — I cannot see them die — 
I cannot see them fade from off the lea — 
The latest Death to Light, and into Sleep 
That leaves no echoes on the mornings' steep! 
Still gold, 
In mould, 

Remembrance makes Eve's hair — 
And protoplasms of an antique dust 
Cling on the Sod, and linger in the Air — 
Fulfilled is not the Babylonians' trust — 
Spotted the East lies waiting her compare. 
Unless she feels through every vein, the Sun to run- 
There can be nothing won 
Upon the brack 
Despite Despair! 
Children of Sun, pass on 
Not yet the dawn — 

O run with fair feet faster than my thought! 
Does not a vista, dare imply an end? — 



Children of Sun 145 

I must pass back, 

I cannot more ascend, 

Though far I sought — 

Let the great vision be with peace withdrawn! 

Yet, what is individual, has rest 

Within the crying of the multitude. 

With their ambitude. 

As if, a snow peak on a mountain's breast 

Higher and higher, wing the endless brood 

Through, 

And one in the communion of the quest, 

Banish the single pain for greater good. 

Love remagnetic thrills for the unknown, 

And here the end ! The Sod shall be resown 

And brimming o'er the Sun, the Sun shall pour 

Larger than self upon the closing door. 

The Souls like atoms, once disintegrate 

Shall mingling heave remultiform as Fate — 

For O! when once the seizure on the root 

Has been, who shall not dream the after fruit? 

We had the Body, and we held the Mind, 

A heart around the Pulse of Heart did wind, 

Till in the ages past the ghost of Death 

Stalked forward for his prey, to teach them whence! 

And if now we lay hands on consequence 

The while we still our breathing quietly, 

The Soul, 

The promise must return its goal, 

By slow rotations round the belted past. 

We shall become by use our gods at last. 

For they who have the strength re-open life, 



146 An Earth Poem 

Take up the tender dead form from the grave, 

Twine the limbs' motive to the motive rife 

Which is no longer limb, the motive saith 

Since use itself, itself shall learn to save. 

As labour shall increase by thought to see, 

As thought shall have a feeling faith in thought. 

As ape has grown to man, there shall be caught 

The penetrateless in the veil of naught, 

And man become the godhead whom he sought! 

Wait, for the forms are changing by degree. 

The Sun's imprisoned prism 

Lends a ray 

Faltering anew across the path of day, 

The dove's wing lends the peacock's tail its hue. 

Was it so strange how all the flowers grew? 

Will it be strange if man outgrows his way, 

And from a mocking angel, whose derision 

Is our arrision, 

Man's self laughs loud 

Yet doth himself, bedizzen 

And be by self re-risen? 

And Matter which was once itself a cloud 

Allowed, 

Pass back, across its Sun to pass away? 

Revolve ! evolve ! 

Until the well of light 

As if a shield of golden breasted night 

Shall sight 

And sound dissolve 

And yearning of man's bosom be his clay! 

One, both in Death, and Life, is the return — 

Sun of the morning which the nights' suns' burn I 



Children of Sun i47 

Unseen, O Soul! Thou Species still unseen, 

To whom Man's aspirations learn, and lean, 

Whose Body is his Thought, whose Life his Dream, 

Whose Individuality the stream 

Of all his Purpose, Thou inoculate! 

I sing, as Sun, as Soul, as Growth, as Fate! 

As Hell, as Schism! 

O futile Sun! 

As yet, so fragile thou 

Thou liest thy dim brow. 

Each evening, where the lowest waters run — 

And art returned each morning to thy task of heavy climbing 

Thus Heaven and Earth combining, 

Fortified in timing. 

The light to its divining. 

How justified these souls, that take their flight 

Each up the sky a passing eremite, 

Nor pursuivant, with the red Earth below their height 

No longer bide regality of state. 

Deeming the regal coffer desolate, 

Wherein with lock of lips, and bolt of hands. 

They sent their guarded wealth across the lands, 

As blisses round the Autumn draw forth blight 

If all, the kith, and kin, of the world's rout, 

Is wisdomed Man, conceived of Harlot-Doubt, 

Let us die on Sun Children, and die out! 

A leopard skin the Sun wears in his woe — 
His dark corona doth with dark lines flow — 
And his dark spots have lines we may not know. 
When to the night he sends his cup of wine, 



148 An Earth Poem 

There is no telling of the brim, by line; 
The tangled regions of the photosphere 
Shall then, envelop man's appointed bier! 
Or from the spectrum of the disc, be seen 
Fresh intertangled rays of solar green: 
Or, shall this our own Master, vernal, young. 
Leaning to Earth with yellow carpets hung 
Not carnival us, to our own surcease 
Lifting us into further stars of Peace? 

The view of things terrestrial passes! See! 

The vortexed Soul conceives each galaxy, 

Around by comets, stars, and systems, wend 

A meteoric bounty to the end — • 

And chasmed in the purpura te well of night, 

The perforate hearthstones of the worlds requite 

The fire in the heart. O World! O Soul! O Child! 

O great abortive Atom undefiled 

From thy white disc, as timid as the morn 

Shall spring at length, the bourne — 

For where the Throne reigns. Empirical 

The reasoning of the Dragon shall let fall 

The spit creative in a nether ring 

To spore the spousal lion to his spring. 

Till, with an answering jar the spheres are set. 

Unto the Master unbeholden yet — 

And, as the Eagle flies he hesitates 

What star, into his bony beak he takes. 

Or makes, 

To scavenger it up and down the dark, 

Till lo! beneath his talons drop the weights! 

The ray its prism yields! — gives forth the mark 



Children of Sun 149 

Where it shall glow in firmamental fret ! 
Hark! 

What sound is it that vibrates through its shriek ? 
The evolution of a species! Clay- 
Fraught with the thunder tumbles into day! 
And voice from casual Word to Word grows weak, 
With its ascension to the Speech Unheard 
For thus, the mission of the Sacred Bird! 
What is the secret of the Sod 
Save God! 
Speech, close! 
Children of Sod, of Air, of Sun, close! Close! 

Now if ye see not, wherefore can ye see 

In solar realms, or worlds campestrial? 

No more of speech is given unto me, 

Children of Sun ye are immersed in light. 

Whether in life, or death, if ye desire to be! 

I leave the strain, I seek the astral 

I merely say, what unto me befell 

In thus so seeking through the Heaven, and Hell, 

Which garbs, and guards the world, in mystery 

The Secret and the Soul, the God, and Sun, 

Comingled seem as one. 

And that great inner self, which ever lies 

As clear and dark as night 

Closed in the eyes — 

The self's own individual Emprise I 

My heavens tottered in their afternoon. 
So large the full and blown bowl of blue — 
The one drop spilled, and Air had no control ; 



I50 An Earth Poem 

Till the red Sun was mastered by his fire, 

Who once with steadfast steps climbed up and high 

And was no more, Lord of the Universe! 

Hush ! He was climbing with himself in lieu, 

Was bearing up the burden of his soul. 

So that before the impress of the moon 

Had shadowed twilight to a dim desire 

Upon the western gate his course adverse, 

Children of Sun, succour Him, let him die! 

The twilight, like a world exotic King, 

Had closed my mind and left my heart to sing! 

The small moth flutters, and then falls to rest — 

Not I, for I shall take it on the wing, 

Protecting all my flight, this sword of song, 

Piercing the mighty breast 

Of dim reclining darkness, through and through. 

I wot by pulsings of my heart, my goal — 

I do not need the Mind's recasket lore begun — 

The Heart — nay, nay, the Soul shall show me where- 

The Heart which faltered in the noontide Air 

Shall play the hierarchical ante-roll. 

And Life become almost as 't were a Soul ! 

The Sun has sunken on the broad sweet bay. 

He has repealed his overtures to-day. 

But lo ! I am the Eagle of the Sun ; 

I follow him in most sequestered way 

With balmy sleep, and revelry of sway. 

Hidden save to my inner eyes more strong, 

While all time, for his sight finds disarray! 

Would it be strange, if haunted are men's signs 



Children of Sun 151 



That spiritual Death no War confines? 
Or spiritual Life, no Death may need? 
Or that around me, while I do succeed 
In forwarding my soul, should lives attend 
Unseen who had this purpose for their end? 
O, all my cry is for one opened spill, 
Of all the stars that cluster in my will ! 
Yet, lest they reign in stuff corporeal 
Which falls upon the light reboreal 
More slowly, then allow in astral mien 
My upper spirit, to break through the screen 
I am a seeker, I abhor shut vaunts 
Of needless trammel, and remouldful wants 
Burying all the deaths, I need not die 
To let loose all myself is all I try. 
Un fortifying what did fortify 
My smaller ways of gain, 

Sun to lie — 

With outspread oneness, on thy golden main ! 

Earth, thy full cup of wine 

1 know, I have not tasted 
But have wasted 

The bubbles pleasantly above the vine. 

For can satiety an individual visit, whose size 

Is all himianity! 

Or one life symbolise 

Creation's sea? 

Nay, save there wake between a human breast 

And thine, an incompatibility 

O Earth, O goad, O rest! 

Below the treasured Heavens waiting be! 



152 An Earth Poem 

It seems in night I live not, nor do die, 

Lest laughter of the world should pass me by, 

Lest from the revelry's sonorous moon 

Some echo, come to hark me of the noon; 

I lie abreast of a new hope alone. 

And gather back my thoughts, unto their own. 

Into this world, an untuned instrument 

Was sent the Spirit! — 

Winds that round it blow, 

That pass all growing flowers without care 

Of nurturing thought, and heed not all the hills, 

That stir refractured waves upon the sea 

And are for seasons but their wayward child. 

Drawn faint phantoms of heredity — 

Must touch the' Soul to sound. 

Must make it fair. 

Take lamentable stress for it through space, 

Draw for it, through the dimnesses fresh wills 

Till it inherit 

Motion, and light, touch, odour, essence, scent! 

The worlds on worlds of passion have beguiled, 

Twining it round with sunburnt circumstance 

That cries in passing torture of its wound, 

In paeans, wisdomed unto music's willed instance, 

Until to lovely Death this Soul, this Spirit go. 

Then what is God, and what the Souls in pain 
That come from hidden viols, with great sound 
Like thunder, breaking through the constant rain 
That night and day, dips the clouds' garments round. 
Seen and unseen by element of stress, and hone, 



Children of Sun 153 

Or weight of force, or measure manifold. 

My soul ! There stands the rapturous Sun in gold, 

A faint star now is trembling up the way 

To where the purple hills their tents unfold, 

Till as a thought remembered comes the day, 

And the white moth of evening's life is done. 

Then thou, dear Light, 

Thou questionable shade. 

Parade thee through the furrows of my being, 

Take thou the young Heart which desire made, 

Watch thou the stars within my vacant night, 

Bend thou, the god, above my benefice, 

Thou person within person, aid my seeing 

Of that sublimest glory which on high. 

Or lost in wreathing darkness, lies below, 

Will benison and bless 

In thy dominion, lead Thee where I go. 

1,1, 

How could I be Life's overwise accomplice? 
For every year this tiredness doth grow. 
Until as mounting, upon melting snow. 
The world bounds onward to its last excess. 

Night, noon and morn, ye are commingled well 

For through the languorous mauve veins of the dark 

Slowly as on a shadowy stream, a bark 

Moors into morning, while the midnight moon 

In smaller crescent mimics the globe noon. 

But still more joined as echoes in a shell 

The Soul becomes a Body, and a Heart, 

Dons them for its own being's covering, 

Foregoes to grieve 



154 An Earth Poem 

That it may thus its higher self impart 

From stillness unto motion, song to wing, 

So that all Life waiting may hear it sing. 

In the world above can we perceive, 

The withered, palsied, famishment of prayer, 

Or prayer alone, while sequented dear form 

Shall not the Senses of Life bring to storm? 

No gothic stone in Abbey purified, 

But has the prisms in the grey stones dyed. 

Nothing is simple save inclusion be 

Within it, putrefaction, tarn, afraid 

Of opaled memory upon them laid. 

And opaque has a visibility 

Through which the eye, must search that it may see 

I as its compare 

This wrong, the foul creeds that show, 

Heaven blaspheming joy, would lend it woe, 

And senseless have it mask thus sense, it cannot know! 

Futile ! I spread it with a lure of sight ! 

That I may see its darkness, and its bright ! 

I give it senses more than here we take 

For feeling! — for e'en deaths of lives awake 

A new sensation — where we watch them break — 

Who has not stood before a sepulchre. 

And felt the pulses in a new way stir, 

Sense of the Sod, and sexuality 

Reel in the quietness which cannot be, 

Hunger and Love, increase when unfilled they await 

By every moment needs unactuality! 

To grow, to strengthen, and at last migrate. 

I tread the streets of astral abode — 

I am uplifted unto sights unknown — 



Children of Sun 155 

Around me are the ways the spirits strode — 
Whose wings weave paths about mortahty, 
I am at last a naked entity, 
My flesh lies with the seed that is unsown, 
I bend my brow and some still force has kist 
My spirit, for I am a spiritualist. 

Children of the Sun, within, without, 

1 feel ye nigh with Promise and with Doubt — 
Hush! Lest my course should become sensual 
I am exalted unto such a spell, 

Of over perfume sense ! — 

And yet, 't is well, 

A frail god-hand leads me through the Immense. 

The leaves were singing, and the branches wait. 

The sunbeams sang as they passed through the gate 

Where clambered in the west, the silent Sun 

In rapturous state let mobile shadows run, 

How far? How long? It is a thing of Fate, 

Night is a carpet for aerial shapes 

Of gods, transcendent man out passing far 

To rest upon, and in the arms of Air 

To sleep unseen. 

Who would break one drop of the evening's dew, 

Or with the impatient penetrable eyes 

Surprise the shades of darkness, and bestrew 

Slight mimics of the angry day's decease 

With light, upon the separating green? 

To Earth all things are fair — 

To them that sleep 

One calm unfolds another into rest — 

I, who have ever wandered on the crest. 



156 An Earth Poem 

Go hence, and passing o'er the bodied deep, 
Dream that the Sky, and Earth, are as the Sea,- 
The Sea of Peace. 

For twiUght drops as from unnumbered grapes 
The juice of Hght, which falls from the first star 
And watching o'er the disentangled skies 
There come the shadows, of the night to be. 



If I go on, O soul, what will betide? 

Shall I grow weary of the weight of light? 

I, who before was novice to the Sun, 

Shall Paradise to me seem dark with prayer — 

And ecstacy the dust upon the streets 

Where the man angel, joins the hallowed saint — 

And prophet, the diviner angel meets — 

Where sin, like a pale woman nun grows faint 

With too divine a beauty, brought from tears? 

Or on the long night's darkness, long and wide 

Become an essence which is spiritualised? 

I grope, and yet with freedom of the Sun 

My arms outstretch for planets never won 

My lover is the mist, nay, she the cloud. 

Nay, she the dark, nay, but the crowd 

Of hidden voices for again I hark! 

I wake from my enfoldment, and I hear 

The errand of the Sun, upon his cheer 

Singing with voices marvellous and near! 



The faint child calls down all the Halls of Rest, 
Waking the sphered music from the breast, 



Children of Sun 157 

He would the dream re-echo on the stream 
That unto others, it may ghnt and gleam — 
Some whispering echoes, from the self of quest. 
He calls for echoes that the Sun Child may repeat, 
Some bleared notes of the song, his ear doth greet. 
Some sound unpassable, some knowledge sweet. 
Which cannot be transmuted: Yet, may lie 
A murmur from the deeps of midnight sky ! 

In garnet pall, 

The Elder Day ascends 

To where he finds no friends 

In surpliced light. 

While over all 

The green grass, and the grey green vapours, keep 

The secret through the night 

Where he doth sleep. 

If only, behind stars some Will be free 

Of Purpose. Patience ; let us bide through Time 

The consequential agony of thought, 

And deed with iron hands bound unto deed defiled, 

And flux of impulse that with surety 

Like a great mother, bears a kindred child. 

Let us like breast babes, suck at the two seas 

Of change and chance, and where the parched sand lies 

Barren and bare and comfortless and wild 

Dear sleep shall be to soothe our discontent. 

With Heaven's bounteous mimic mysteries. 

We are, on shores immeasurably wrought 

Of ages, where the ancient prophets went, 

Where will of ours alone dismay defies, 



158 An Earth Poem 

And on the tottering marges of our day, 
Climb to the places human and sublime, 
Until the great wind blows all self away. 



What are we little mortals, and large souls 

That like a halo glisten round our path ? 

As clouds move past their suns up, on, 

Farther and farther, passed the will to stay 

We die as they. 

Sinking as nothing where the ocean rolls. 

Giving ourselves, our impulse, our controls, 

Until at last, there hath 

The power risen to confront our way, 

Who has the eyes to see the dawn decay, 

And something of the evening pass to dawn. 

Take heed in comfort, lest the way be long, 

And take not heed in constant mead, or measure — 

Vain countings of a wrong, defy its death — 

Vain pleadings tire voices for their song — 

Within the heart of all the secret treasure 

Waits, for the waking of promethean breath 

Thine — thine, to give, and wholly half thyself 

To spend upon, in giving life and light — 

This, this absorb thee, draw thee out, make strong, 

And e'er completed on the Master's shelf 

Shall lie in vigil one more human life, 

The sun shall spread his purple cloth for night. 

The stars shall wing their course beyond the pleasure 

Of God's, to spread on unillumined skies 

Their radiance, with a calmness rife 

Within mute Heaven's long protecting eyes. 



Children of Sun 159 

Forgive me for all placements which are wrong — 

Dwarfment of sweets 

Which solitudes the soul 

In its own ego — if my sad feet, 

But follow after through the paths of song 

When one hour sooner they had led the wa}'' — 

Acceptances of blisses ready made — 

Rejection, of the forming of small joys 

With which fond Life, doth let her children play — 

If I, but mimic praises of the light 

Wrapping myself, in the close cloak of shade ! 

this, the most forgive, if, in the night 

1 should be hindered by some small alloys 
From my first goal, not to replace my goal! 
Forgive me if I mimic my own song. 
Worlds without end unnumbered and untold! 
Each star once for it chose its satellites 
From planets numberless. Thus let my will 
Choose from old glories that which it creates 
Anew in reverence by their placement here! 
O mighty worlds, for cadence in my shell 
See that I be washed up, by new waves still 
Dripping upon the beach, each afternoon — 
Forgive my hesitancy — ^which hesitates, 
Pleasure my thorn 

As my delights — 

Snarings, and spell, 

Forgive me more, if the dawn find me old — 

Bringing the same mute music to thine ear! 

Then Sotil of mine ascend, take thou thy flight 
Into the perishable night, 



i6o An Earth Poem 

Let darkness fold me, 

Let sweet silence be 

The unrequited messenger of thee, 

Until a thunder waking from the sky 

Thy great response of immortality 

Assure thee in thyself — let the clouds make 

In hiding thy fair presence as a light, 

The measure of thy upward soaring clear — 

Palpitate through the ether, till there break 

So loud a beating on the low air's ear, 

That if thyself, unto thyself, should die — 

Thy element of Heaven would draw near — 

O brave and lovely Soul, soar high and high ! 

O hungering sense of wild relentless laws, 

Why hast thou fnade me this, that for faint cause 

Is seen but a far echo half distilled 

O'er moonlit valleys, sun-girt oceans hilled, 

In soft wave valleys, till I seem a blight • 

Half upon nature, half upon the light, 

Ununified, unvitalised in force, 

Part for myself, and partly for remorse 

Of vast outgrowing Nature, that she can 

Create no unity in pulse of man ? 

Fain would I be like him, who in the dome 

Finds entity of will to bring him home. 

Who striking his broad trident in the seas 

Still knows his entity, their mysteries 

Who peoples planets, and o'er governs chance, 

Making of myriad forms his own romance — 

Stilling creation, allowing it to be 

For ever struggling to him, nor yet free, 



Children of Sun i6i 

For even as his, our sequestered forms 

Of life. We know, like him, the land storms, 

The tender south-west wind, the burdened tears 

That fall in Time's dear passage like the years, 

The single trees that in the garden shed 

Their immemorial silence o'er the dead, 

The simple rose, the guileless asphodel 

With her white stains leading the way to Hell, 

The bloodless poppy by which sleep has caught 

And held the bosom of young dreams to naught, 

Fulfilment of gold com in autumn fields. 

And wheat and barley that the full grain yields, 

The apple, and the cherry, and the grape. 

That lit a liquor from their perfect shape, 

A liquor in the autumn lent to lips 

That long have hungered waiting their eclipse. 

The nothingness of airs that rest and shine 

Making the sphered Earth with them combine 

The law of her creation, till they twine 

The lucid passion of humanity. 

Yea one of these, even like one, to be. 

And not a variegated essence wrung 

Of music, coming with a myriad tongue 

From out some worn and circumstantial gain. 

Part ecstacy, part song drift, and part pain. 

For sword of Time 

To Earth, not only unto her. 

Who sleeps 

Lying confessed. 

Hath thou thy later wisdom all expressed ! 

In warfare of such hilly steeps, as climb 



1 62 An Earth Poem 

Above Earth's natural welfare, in the deeps 

Of common sense! — 

But unto all, thou deignest eloquence, 

Who see thy long blades burnished in the light ! Shall I aver 

The mental strife, 

Those who imbue 

The well kept flesh with senses strange and new — 

And use th5^self , for other claims than life ? — 

For perpetuity 

Implies a gradual yearning, in whose noose 

Are caught without omission, 

Hapless in their fruition. 

Sleep, child bearing, and a wide nutrition, 

Transmission, 

Which let thy sovereign power again run loose 

To labour, and to" prayer, 

To slay far other things of Earth, and Air, 

Symbols and portents. Child-births of the Mind, 

Divergent sleeps in old necessity, 

Whose vaster surname still is energy — 

And hybrid fruits 

Which in men's hearts we find — 

Therefore thy sword upon the sunlit routes 

Shall higher still be held. 

Till for new purposes by strange recruits. 

The shadow of the sword, shall slay the world. 

Yes, on Mankind! 

Man has the choice, though it be bitter guile 

His energy, unlike that which is found 

In seed, and growth of ground. 

To bask 



Children of Sun 163 

In bird, and animal, broods but awhile 
The way to tend 
About itself to wend, 

Sleeps, feeds, and then is free to soar, or droop, 
To spot, or fleck 

Its pinions into ruin and to wreck. 
To loop- 
No least task 
Preordinates his use — 
He must have choice 

To barter, or to make, destroy, or build, or bind, 
Sorrow, rejoice. 
And so his soul goes fluttering wide, and loose. 

Is this then not the question unreplied? 

Not even for the compass binnacle 

Here, in Nature's latest creature 

Decked in godly traceful feature, 

Feeling himself as potent, and as free, 

In choice of ecstacy, 

And long endeavour, 

As are the stars which can shine on for ever, 

Thought born, thought bred. 

Manning the Earth with tread, 

With feet most lightly tied. 

With forehead crestial? 

Now he is lost, an Angel glorified 

Walks on no feet, prepares no ritual Mind, 

Obelisk's Thought, upon a pinnacle 

That glints above the thought he left behind; 

And above Earth in spaces, wide, celestial, 

Allowed is to have wider strife to be 



1 64 An Earth Poem 

A chord, or discord of all Harmony. 

The Air-waves beat beneath him — 

The Sun's rays no longer one in disentangled glow 

Break in renewed effulgence through the dim — 

In legions of the spheres he shall become, and know. 

Let us assume that God is simple state 

Of an entire consummation, or the pause 

Or cause 

Where gravitation ceases. Lives that here 

Have found their latest excess, or their bier, 

Go on through lives of the celestial sphere, 

And many spheres, before such light be won. 

God in this Life is Will, within the Sun 

Is, Impulse, farther on, we may increase 

To have desire perfect in its birth, 

Then will the end come unto any Earth, 

Or planet with the Instantaneous — 

It is alone, while Time moulds slow or fast 

Futile returns of pulses, there shall last 

Need for recrimination in the vast, 

For Peace 

Misunderstood by us 

Attainment is, that does not hesitate. 

Perchance, this Master-Spirit in the west 

Who leaves the stain upon the ocean's crest. 

And leaves us for a time to wake or rest. 

To think, to dream, on portents, may be for us, our God? 

He looks as red as hearts that bleed to win 

The secret reflux of the growth within. 

He seems accustomed to all things; the Sod, 

The Air, Himself; 



Children of Sun 165 

He watches pelf, 

And watches actual gain, and growth, and light, 

He is in day, and magnetises night. 

His white expansions seem our souls to fain. 

He spatulates His form, as we our pain, 

Ah ! Surely He is God or very joy 

Of His own life would slacken His employ. 

Floating chimeras why compare 
Thy beauty, to a substance tangible? 
Why not tell 

The hidden wonder lurking in thy grief. 
That makes our share 
Of Soul here still in anguish find relief? 
In the same power's potency. 
All in great majesty. 

Doth Time roll on, bearing his world to sleep — 
In crimson splendour twined with calms of prayer- 
More, and more, may pass as waters through the deep, 
Of sense. 

Yet still, an eloquence 
Of falling tears makes music on the Air! 
O sing, that these shall pass, and passing die, 
And not that beauty crumbles into naught — 
All Heaven to me must be a well of Thought, 
Or shall I vainly, frequently decry. 
Thy Sun for thy dear pale and wondrous Moon 
Child that the planet Earth brought into pain, 
And so to birth. 
And swoon. 
O Music come again, 
Maker of tears, that passeth, and must die. 



i66 An Earth Poem 

The faint child calls down all the Halls of Earth, 

To wake the souls of elder life, and birth, 

To wake the rich, and poor, 

To cry the feel 

Of trumpets ceaseless in their woe, and weal, 

To cry awide 

The silences in songs unjustified. 

That with their frailer notes cannot endure! 

To cry to the forgetful all his lure, 

Mocking, I mimic him, 

For I have heard his sighs 

On ears of Time that have not grown wise, 

I sound the Portent even through the Dim ! 

What shall be just since Justice is defied 
By sane examplifers of life, who tried 
To wed faint Custom as an alien bride. 
And their own souls beatitude, as ever, 
And take their souls as trophies brought with her — 
Trophies and jewels from Kashmir, 
Brought to the desert's caravansery, 
Who through their sense her touched, and tasted fair- 
Have wed their brains to cobwebs of her hair — 
With sensiate fear 

From dreaming of the diurnal stars that set 
In their desire as an amulet — 

Who have come back to drink her fresh young lips — 
Nor dreamt the way she sips 
And found them perfumeless — 
Who have gazed long 

Upon her eyes, where those strange mirrors throng 
Which image Earth and image her through song. 



Children of Sun 167 

Who take her SphinxHke hands — contendedness 

And use her long used body with new hope 

To fashion wings, 

Or wingless breed a child — 

For giving Life that still her chalice sings 

To sad convulsion of the undefiled — 

Who climb the ages' purpose, as a rope 

In which each knot must spell heredity — 

And spot the parents of the ceaseless sea — 

And still through Fate, have been receaselessness, 

Barren, with but the longing more to be. 



Who shall be just since Justice is defied 

By the exotic courtesan of self 

Who worships by her bed of sacrilege 

The ego only for the Ego's pelf? 

And steals the wanted heir from the Queen's womb? 

Which vamperise all mute glad things from Will, 

And torture human wills until they swoon 

In abnegation, or forgetfulness, 

Whose swollen umpire would disclaim the Sun, 

And dye the lions' skins in blood of lambs, 

Making the lily spotted by the rose — 

Would have their justices from hopes denied. 

Would have their honest hopes expelled by shams, 

Would have the morning disregard the noon. 

And all that has been won 

In pupilage 

Of skies eternal, and of dark's reclose, 

Be mute and still; 

Save where such knowledge opens sores and woes 



1 68 An Earth Poem 

Breeding the bitterment's regretfulness. 

And lays the bright Sun, in this seeming tomb. 

How little sound they make these moving Souls 

That pass terrestrial abodes in pain, 

And wander somewhat in the orbs of bliss? 

How little sound falls from traversing feet 

Touching the ground, with motion's wilful kiss? 

Only a faint gong murmurs in the goals — 

To tell the way they struggle, and are vain — 

And struggling on, rest in the recomplete. 

But for us here, where oceans make their plaint. 

Thunders have voice, and winds in passions roam 

There is a music loud and terrible. 

The falling of the rain on Sod, or Stone, 

The flapping of the eagle's wings in flight, 

Songs of the birds that sing by morn, and night, 

And stranger still, here where we seek for home 

Tears, laughter, melancholy, mirth, and moan, 

And possibly an answer sharable 

Vague, loud, sweet, shrill, — tumultuous or faint! 

Life, thou eternal organist of day — 

Who on the billows of the wind doth make 

The trees and rivers, into pipes of tone. 

Or sounding with great thunder in the night 

Brings sparks of heated fire through the storm — 

Who crushes drooping pearls the stars away — 

Whose wintered passion makes forests retiform — 

Thou wouldst not, this last Love of ours forsake? 

Nor come with dimness on autumnal blight? 

More pitiful it were to be alone — 



Children of Sun 169 

Than to reach towards thine own imperial height ; 
O glorious Sun, I wake, and through the night 
Thy wreath flaked moon, but leads to lands of sleep, 
Until awaking by the dawn seas deep 
Once more shall I behold thee in my sight. 

Mad mom, 

Glad of the thorn, 

Wake, rise, 

Thy very burning Sun shall solemnise 

The rites of anguish with which thou art born, 

To pour thy gold drouth down the long noon's horn 

And drink it with thine evening's dews anointed 

To the dark midnight with her black lips torn. 

Thou art again appointed 

Now thou art by Children of Sun worn. 



Sonnets and Other Poems 



A SONNET 

I WOULD be some vast, dead, gold sonneteer 
Who heralds forth the crocus and the rose, 
Or down the high mid-passage of the year 
Blow blasts for empires that seek repose, 
Or with the fall my latest period close. 
Or as Apollo with gigantic cheer, 
Or sadly hymn of death by blighting foes, 
Or tell how last sun's rays shall disappear. 

But all the time, my verse goes out to seek 
Rivers that gently wander through the plains — 
And with sleek winds sing the disturbless trees! 
"Vith accidental butterflies full meek. 
Whose wing before the least of purpose wanes, 
Or but go humming with the summer bees! 



J73 



THE WOMAN OF HEAVEN 

THE sky is as a woman's purple veil, 
Doth she enclose a harlot or a nun? 
What is the face, that ever must be pale 
Beyond the fretted risings of the sun ? 
Now dripping fires in man's fingers run — 
The strands that ravel, as the faint clouds sail 
While winds remesh and tangle o'er the One 
Colossal Entity, unchangeless, frail! 

Mother of men, beatitude serene! 
Watch this behind thy closure infinite — 
Mother of blooms, that grow contentedly, 
Of clouds repured and conquerable night — 
We crush each other, in our haste to Thee ! 
Bend for our hearts thine omnipresent Screen! 



174 



SONNET 

WITHIN a beauteous thought serene and whole 
Is grown a fair garden, where I may 
At my desire wander, or make play 
With grass that needs no ritual to control. 
No path there led me, save an oriole 
Whose tortuous throat leapt forth to lead the way, 
And there awoke for me in wilful sway 
Some lovely flowers, waiting for my soul. 

Where one night, bending 'neath the sunset, I 

Within the cool of evening would have held 

A bulb within the sod of this still place 

Till looking in the glass of a pool's dye 

I rose in horror seeing it the world 

And the deep lines of passion on my face! 



175 



SLEEP 

O SLEEP, when take me further to thy heart 
On falHng eyehds path of dark'ning deep, 
To lead me to the vistas, where the steep 
Elysium blindness falleth, and thou art ! 
From out thy lids no plaintive echoes start, 
No dire Earth her miseries can weep, 
Nor on thy bosom, thou exalted Sleep 
Can care'take harbour, or thy amour part! 

If thou canst not eternal mistress be, 

Then portion well my visits to thy dome, 

Thy high locked chamber wrought of ivory. 

Where thy low Circean winds lead those who roam 

Whose hands hold ever the unseen gold key. 

Dreamers of clay, to call thy bosom home. 



176 



SONNET 

CEASELESS 

OWAR of nature, leading to bright cause 
Of some glad haven in the desert set — • 
Playing with light between the Sphinx's paws 
Immutable, intangible as yet. 
Have thou a mercy on each soul; forget 
They come to thee with burden of self laws — 
Within thy bounty, with an urgesome fret 
That shall outspeed thee on thy course, nor pause! 

I climb and climb and never am forspent 

Though hidden 'neath the height I seek to win 

As glacier torrents of a mountain peak, 

For some still echo calls me from within, 

As if the wind upon my instrument 

Were strings of music, still the voids I seek! 



177 



DISILLUSIONMENT 

TO sink away in sunset like a prayer 
Being but hope of truth, which was deferred. 
To hear the grasses murmur "Ah, not there," 
And the god mumble o'er his human word — 
To feel the poppies' kisses in my hair. 
And hear the Sod's deep pulses never heard 
Laying my ear beneath the rapturous air 
My breast for lovers who are never stirred! — 

Down, into silent Death — to waiting Death ! — 

Tearful with eyes that longer need no tears, 

Counting the futile pulses of the breath. 

As the gulls seek the sea the scattered years — 

While over all one simple spirit saith 

** Down, — down like vapours to your moveless biers.' 



178 



UNSELFISHNESS 

IT is alone, when we reject the heed 
Of our own beauty, or our claim on it, 
That to us Earth doth open up her creed 
And from her beauty, words of ancient writ 
Are spelled upon the vision to befit 
In effluence the tender of her gleed — 
As if our strata held the soul's Sanskrit, 
The Yajur Veda, for the world of need. 

Therefore, in gardens of the lovely earth. 

And the foam gardens of the outer seas, 

Let us in pleasure wander hand in hand — 

Clasping the joy which was our own at birth, 

With later creatures of a lesser ease. 

Till there shall ride a rapture through the land ! 



179 



SOME MUSIC 

BEFORE thy music I, a lotus, lie, 
A reed that bendeth to the poise of tone- 
And when I seek for thee, and am alone, 
It seems to wake such music I must die — 
To perfect this accord, each note I try 
That rests in human need with minor strown- 
And now I kiss an ear, and now a cone 
Of echoing caves, that join the sea and sky! 

Now I am mute — ^but whether life, or death, 
Shall give to me the murmur of thy voice 
I cannot care — my will goes out of speech — 
My longing harks for some earth given breath- 
Is it thine own? May I arise? Rejoice? — 
Or penetrate thee between reach and reach? 



i8o 



TYRANNY 

AS long as thou shalt drink life from the skies 
With slow belated hands of negligence 
I hold up Heaven! — ^knowing it were wise 
To drop the chalice of its consequence 
And mark the splintered shape ! Lest some surmise 
Lay in the shatters broken, whose new sense 
Should turn my face from gazing on thine eyes, 
Of paradisial promised eloquence ! 

Yet, day and night, as still my fingers clutch 

The heavy borne weight above my head. 

Thou blind'st with sleep my unaccomplished will — 

And torturing me, with thy demanding touch 

Fret my endeavour, till I turn instead 

My whole unmuted purpose to thee still ! 



I8l 



DEAD DAY 

DEAD Day why hast thou sunk within the west? 
Arise again that I may see thy face ! 
— If only thy ghost come to me to grace 
My habitation and to make it blest! — 
Die not! Thou child of fortune lulled to rest 
Within the twilight's, eveningtide's embrace — 
Upon the breast of Heaven's outspreaded space 
O thou, who knew my suffering the best ! 

Dead Day! why hast thou died upon the lea? 

Upon the waters do I watch thy pall ! 

The evening wind arises calling thee ! 

And unto thee the shrouded streams make call ! 

The dark'ning mists obscure the voiceless sea! 

But thou? Dead Day thou art to me my all! 



182 



SONNET 

THE heart breeds hunger from rejected bliss 
In the strange lines of a forgotten face, 
Or touch upon the brow of lips that trace 
The perfect circle of a lover's kiss! 
Or but remembrance, which makes of this 
Small climbing Earth, the anguish of a race 
Leashed in the frail mind's tortuous embrace, 
Knit to the young soul's waiting chrysalis ! 

But while the heart makes motion, day by day 
The pulse doth take her long accustomed right, 
Whose children we, regretfully obey. 
And summon forth our wills to meet the night — 
While netting wisdom in heartrendering sway 
We stay, to greet the coming of the light. 



183 



VIDHATA 

VI D HAT A wrote upon thy broad clear brow 
Who keeps me from thee in the fate of men 
With palm leaf, and a snake skin, and a pen, 
Given upon the night of Brahma's vow. 
And though I should encompass thee, and bow 
Before thee as a reed — and although when 
I sorrow I am thine — our commune then 
Was ended if the longing haunts me now. 

Some hold that human life wlas made of dust, 

And some combine with dust our will as air 

Most alienably lost in quest of soul ! 

I am a Hindoo though I pray no prayer 

To any imaged Buddha, nor have trust 

That aught enfolds me, save my life's control! 



184 



AFAR 

SMALL is the earth that roundly spheres for souls 
The young white crescent of her perfect moon 
And trumpeting forth faint music, from lost goals 
Pauses to hush them in her afternoon — 
That none may know the way that she unrolls 
The silent night where comfort is unborn. 
But on the waiting earth again enscrolls 
The symbolled question lies in birth of morn. 

Across the veil, each tear is filled with joy, 
And on the breast of Mother Certitude 
Lies Rapture sleeping as a slumberous boy: 
There is no sound to break the solitude — 
Save Gabriel's trumpet in its own employ 
Calling the vagrant souls from hill and wood! 



185 



SONNET 

DEAR love! I seem as ever at some brink 
Waiting for the lost transport of thy word 
To bear me on — but question as I think 
That this is not for me — but the unheard 
That sings around each breast as if a bird — 
It says me well, that I must rise, or sink. 
Steadfast, alone, so conquered and averred 
The doorh of longing for the hope I drink — ! 

Yet, sometimes in the syllibance of night 

I catch an echo, that is not mine own — 

A parched long cry from some forgotten pain — 

Hush! it may be my heart's voice void of tone, 

Or a mute whisper from a life of light 

Led in the past, that may not come again! 



i86 



COMPLEX LIFE 

UNDERNEATH each mind lie slumberous pools 
Of lives forgotten, and of hopes forsworn, 
In quietness we wake unto the morn. 
But as we know the ocean's grave sand-rules 
Lying beyond us o'er the rounding sky, 
We realise that below our happiness, 
Or our despair, the sunken pools confess 
A mirror of ourselves, beyond our eye. 

If one might go beneath the crimson heart 
He liv^es right royal with, in sovereignty 
— The great display of nature — he would start 
At miraged shadows hungering to be free — 
O Life! between all time, and time, thou art 
Only the surface of such mystery! 



187 



SONNET 

THE softest green is hidden under shades 
When in the afternoon the torpid sun 
Beneath the pines, lets his red fingers run, 
ThrilUng light shafts into long colonnades, 
That interspersed with shadow branches, — blades 
The dagger lights, until they are as one 
Bright path of colour, underneath the dunne. 
Which circling round them, into darkness fades- 
Are not thine eyes like light when thou dost turn 
Thy lips and hands from mine antagonised, 
The while I wait thee where the shade is not ? — 
While on thy path, my hilted daggers burn 
Unsheathed for thy caress, and sacrificed 
From purpose which thy heart hath all forgot? 



i88 



PAUSE! 

THERE are still moments wedded to each thought- 
They dance the minuet of day, and night, 
Sweet as a bower in sequester wrought 
For subtle dreams in sleep, exquisite, bright, 
Moody, yet tauntlessly still held to light — 
As if the girl of day, her fair feet caught 
Should wander with her eyes, in their despite 
Within a cobweb grass, of mist ensought ! — 

Or do upon a strain of murmured air 

The pauses fall, to make the tone more clear — 

Or on the heart, the burden of a will 

Too slender to embalm itself in care — 

Too shrinedly encaught, to let a tear 

Know that within the bosom it doth thrill. 



189 



A PALACE UPON SANDS 

1 MIGHT have built a palace upon sands 
But I remembered its futility, 
And all the winter surges of the sea 
Rose as to wreck the structure of my hands — 
Then drew strange, sane men round, He understands, 
They spake, the laws of mutability ! 
But the same time there grew regret in me 
As I went wandering through alien lands. 

Walls, very walls, arose before my mind! 

And parapets and chimneys built to blast! 

And loosened gables swinging to the wind! 

Frail fragile windows to the hill waves cast ! 

O, thou sad wisdom of the heart unkind 

This might have been mine own within the past — 



190 



SONNET 

WITHIN the forests' tangled arabesque 
I watch thy form with hidden archery — 
To pierce through shade, thy figure statuesque 
Sequestered 'neath the leafage of the tree. 
For from within its ampled branchery 
Thou veilst from me, in woman guise Moresque — 
Mosaic in Nature's armoured filigree — 
Bowered for aching heart in far Floresque. 

I would I had the eyes of genii, so 

Sights of the sense, and of such dimmest wold 

As mocks the shepherd's quiet sleep were mine — 

And thoughts that into shadows ebb and flow — 

And wilderness of earth's recessions fold 

For bright imprintment on a single shine. 



191 



SONNET 

THE darkness broods, as if the mist of eves 
Yearned to caress the Earth in showing guise, 
For all day through, around her silent wise 
He held her promise to the night's reprieve 
A husband waiting for the child, which leaves 
The breast it clung to with the matin's sighs — 
Knowing her bosom his, the while disguise 
Mantles her thought which for his tenure grieves. 

The myrtled ocean calls him to draw close — 

The birds call to him with their throats aspray 

With unrejected music, far, and near, 

As if the calling of the heart to glose. 

My God the air is round her all the day! 

And Heaven protects her through her hours of fear! 



192 



FUTILE TIME 

ONCE I began to sorrow with the sun 
And it was sunken ; with night — then was risen 
Dawn, in the cornfields, apple-cheeked a-mizzen — 
And noon eclipt her bounty, while begun. 
Life thou art jesting ! While thy fair feet run 
Across the shadows which the lights bedizzen, 
And with thy fairness thou art wan and wizzen ! 
And with thy youth, thine age already won! 

O Tirne, what wilt thou with these perishings? 
Wilt thou not in thy changure sip my grief? 
Day, and at midnight, thou hast stilled these feet 
Thou wilt not harbour love, sick cherishings ! 
Thy wind hast blown o'er the sorry leaf. 
O give us joy! Thou canst not, thou art fleet! 



13 193 



LOVE OLDER 

THY hair is parted on thy widthless brow, 
And certainty is on thy seeing orbs, 
While a sweet shadow thy round cheek absorbs, 
Have the gods come, to crown thee even now ? 
While elder youth laughs from my wide lips trow? 
And fruits of youthage lie in heavy korbs, 
As Springtime bird in Indian summer worbs, 
The paramour of autumn's winging vow? 

Wert thou as young as heyday in bright May 
Thy comeliness could not outblush the rose : 
Wist not, remember not, but in this hour 
Forget not, we have lived to find our day — 
When ground-hog sees his shadow on the snows, 
And winter moon reflected seems a flower! 



194 



THE STARS 

THE young night rides above in regal state, 
Behind her car the pageant of the shades, 
The while the clouds float into white mossed glades 
Beyond the portal of the heaven's gate! 
Draw in the tired light arms of the day, 
And let the limpid moon rise kind and fair ! 
Golden the war sun sinks, and as a prayer 
There come the still sea's murmurs far away. 

Peace to the copses of the jungle trees! 
Rest to the rivers that the oceans call ! 
O'er slumberous mountains of the centuries 
The dimness of the laden shadows fall. 
The stars bear forth their scroll of mysteries 
Spelling a Dragon and a Dream to all ! 



195 



SONNET 

ONE reaper comes who says to me, and thee, 
The moon is dead, the sun is yet to die, 
And I, who most have watched within a sea 
Of longing, marvel not that such as I 
Who have no nether harvest fields to try 
With scythe, or any strained cup for the bee, 
Where latest life of summer left the sky — 
Should be recalled by death to pass thee by. 

But should I turn from hierarchical bliss 
To watch thy face a little, and thy smile. 
Open it wide, as when the earth makes shine 
In young sidereal morning, and for this 
The sun shall carry me across his isle 
In imaged shape more human than divine — 



196 



MY KAKIMONO 

THE Kakimono in my house of light 
Is of thyself beloved, day by day, 
I change its lustrous beauty! — night by night 
I cast the picture for a new away ! 
As thou dost grow exalted in my sight — 
From resonant gold — to ravish gold and grey ! 
For now some ideate angel thou art white ! 
Now super-subtle in thy tint's array! 

I draw thee by an act of my own will 

Upon the rice paper, in form and line 

Until thy shape like some traced wraith appears. 

if the painted image were not thine 

But mine own hand's work, in the doubt and still 

That compasses the labour of my years — 



197 



SONNET 

LET us relive, again, as if to-day 
Grown in the springtime of our own accord. 
With gathered hands we might at evening lay 
Upon an altar where no prayer adored 
The saint iconic of the passioned lord — 
The tangled buds which cluster in the spray — 
Which Mother Earth has for our being stored — 
And now in thoughtless heed we toss away ! 

For it were wonderful if youth were wise. 
And it were beautiful if one might see 
Innocence running from the belted land 
Out to the hindered boundaries of the skies. 
If I could walk on calor waves to thee 
Or thou couldst touch imperceptive my hand ! 



198 



DELIRIUM 

WHO threw the dust into the blind one's eyes? 
Was it the Sandwoman near the shoals of Time 
From her grey bag, that held with must and grime 
The grains' compassion and the grim surmise? 
0, I am lonely underneath the skies! 
Strange I have never — cannot be sublime ! 
I mock the ocean as I strive to climb — 
And the waves leave me barren and unwise ! 

Now I am blind — inexorably blind — 

I see death faces that are calling me 

Where large lips droop to catch the falling tears. 

Shall I regret what I have left behind? 

Shall I go out even across the sea? 

— Across the aversed comfort of closed years? 



199 



AT LAST 

THE Sun at last shall garb the World in black, 
And round his course shall dance his satellites 
As mourning widows, dressed in robes of nights. 
Till as the ocean from the moon draws back 
One long last ray, their rimmed forms show in lights — 
Then shall the harvest, which the moons retrack 
Be desolate of grain, save where the rack 
Of gaumless souls turn home as hungering mites. 

Thou art like me, O Sun, thou hast withheld 

In somewhat light, and lustre, thy sad heart — 

But now, the eagle nearing more to thee 

Shall go out with the great winds where thou art — 

And death with highest climbings in the sea 

Shall cover our twin bodies and the world! 



200 



THY MEMORY 

THY memory is like a garden cool — 
Where winds of night their grave siestas take. 
There let me lie upon a lucid pool 
As closed pond-lily on a lonely lake. 
My heart was hot with love, thou couldst not slake, 
And now has gone from out thy realms, and rule. 
Nor with thy faint young bosom's breathing wake, 
Leaving a shape behind thou canst not fool — 

More hushed am I, than if I should be dead. 
Parted from thee, who hast my shadow kept — 
Let the trees of thy garden sing it well ! — 
Allow the flowers still to wreathe its head ! — 
Permit the rain to touch it which was wept 
From Heaven's heart for all whereon it fell! 



20I 



A SKULL 

A MUTABILITY my hand doth hold, 
For in my fingers as I press it tight 
It drops a Uttle dust, as if not quite 
It were contented with its shape or mould — 
And what has change is neither young, nor old, 
Though driftless centuries may there unite 
To parent it to birth. Touch, motion, light 
Torture and sever, — eternalise, enfold. 

O 't is a native moment for my soul ! — 

This skull as near me, as myself may be, 

A tabernacle it has used before 

Bleached in the sun, where endless suns must roll 

To endless sunsets on a tideless sea — 

Hush! — Lest it be reincarnate once more! 



202 



NIGHT 

NIGHT is when the day for her dear sun 
Wears purple weeds and rue at his demise- 
Her somnolent beauty rests about her eyes 
Which in her sorrow she from earth would shun. 
The stray stars circle, till they make a crown 
Of empire reaching to the upper skies — 
And in the west the patient shadow dies — 
And pitying dark like moistening rain falls down. 

Into the bosom of the moving vast 
The day birds nest to still their wings from flight, 
The seas like pilgrims all their waves have cast 
Upon the shore in the tide-drenching light. 
Passively, Sleep, as Heaven's antipast 
Comforts the world, her long protecting Knight. 



203 



CONVENTIONALITY 

BEHIND the evening, like an elephant 
Dim with dark hind and ivory tusk for moon 
Bearing the world its burden of musked noon 
There comes a form, who gravely doth enchant 
A paean and a psalm hiberniant — 
In whose hands lie a cryptogram of rune, 
And while his beard he strokes, doth most entune 
The secret sorry syllabents thereat. 

Go, ghostly form, and leave divinity — 
Thou lovest best to mouth the word of doom 
In melancholy utterance uncouth, 
Holding thy brazen beads across the gloom, . 
Thy book, and soul before untutored youth 
Which images a live eternity. 



204 



NATURE 

HOW far is Heaven on a day in spring? — 
Farther than light encouched upon the grass- 
Farther than can the lumid blue a- wing 
As soarer of the sun the stillness pass — 
Farther than day who long doth kneel at mass 
Where orifice of apple-blossoms swing — 
Farther than startling Hours who alas 
The melancholy leave of summer bring. 

But in the autumn, when the heated rain 
Warm from the corpse of leaves grown scarlet cold 
Under the feet like osier crystals start, 
And cover in their passage cloud and wold, 
The lavish One again with bended heart 
Burdens the Sod with her celestial pain. 



205 



TOGETHER 

I HEARD from out the wind swept harmony 
Of being, this tumultuous trombant cry, 
That thou shalt live for ever, thou and I, 
Treading the cosmic paths of the to-be ! 
The clouds of evening hurtle o'er the lea, 
The dual essences of nature ply 
With rhythmic efforts, sequently they die. 
And even is this so with thee and me. 

The clouds of day and night but meet one end 
To wrap the ceaseless motion of the sphere 
In saddest darkness — Ever now contend 
The elements of vibrant power. Each year 
Grows heavy with its own weight, as to spend 
Its futile purpose on this globe of bier. 



?q5 



SONNET 

BY pool of Sicily the young boy sate 
Piping on reeds which envied all the throats 
Of sleepless birds, until its thin sweet floats 
Defying air, which builds for sound a gate, 
As if he sang to some enchanted mate 
Whose omnipresent beauty hid in motes 
The while, their filmy form had met his notes 
He sang the morning out as if 't were Fate. 

He still sings on, in hidden Sicily, 

And pipes the world in his delirious verse, 

While all the lands run sinking to the sea 

To hide the loadstone of the universe. 

And makes disaster fail in melody — 

— He pipes of giant stars that bear the curse ! — 



207 



SONNET 

MOCK not the spirit which in torture holds 
The unwrit scroll, to breast and ear of Time, 
Or seeks the sundered apples which in golds 
Strove to be full in Hespers' western clime, 
Unseen they bloom, and hide as if from crime 
Of long delay, in consequential moulds, 
Into the blue of Life as bells of thyme 
The perfeetness of air her texture folds. 

It is the seeker for the mute beyond 
Who garnishes his kingdom with best pelf — 
He has forgotten how it was to rest, 
And in his long abortive ways has found 
An abnegation for his rod of self 
Which is of all creative goods the best. 



208 



SONNET 

WHEN we from sluggard calm, are called by pain 
As if a deferential mien to wear 
Towards life's realities, we know the share 
Of suffering is large, but has no gain — 
And are bent down as broken stalks of grain. 
Having assumed a passion of despair, 
Harboured alone by the receding air, 
Tortured by tumult, by disaster slain! 

O how much frailer than my thoughts, am I 
That they can measure me a kingdom vast 
Outside my being, and above the sky, 
Bounded by no futurity or past, 
To oceans where they must return to die 
Bravely as rivers sailing from the vast! 



14 209 



LIFE'S FEAST 

IF Life shall still invite me to her feast 
I shall not prove myself a morbid guest, 
Although in travelling from the innocent east 
Unto the far and sun beridden west, 
My spirit may have dreamt its course oppressed. 
1 laugh, and kiss at last the revel beast — 
The wines from ancient mouldering vineyards pressed. 
The rapturous fruit, where even growth has ceased. 

For was my soul but born to have been pained? 
And was my heart renailed upon the cross 
For this? — That even ere my life had waned 
My red lips should have tasted bitter loss. 
While sat Control above the board disdained 
With brooding promise, like an albatross? 



2IO 



M- 



HEREDITY 

AN is fulfilling some old sire's design — 

His are the lips that touch the future's face, 
And his the hands, by whose suppressing grace 
He brings the world its forecast and its shrine. 
Possession, and free will, and present need. 
Commingle, while the spheres are moving on — 
Yet, piteously the sad night whispers, dawn 
Will come too late, for each to claim his meed. 

Father ! What dost thou desire through me 
That thus so barren stand I in mine age? 
Thine aspirations I imperfect see, 

And hold thyself alone my heritage, 
While by the laws of mutability 

1 leave mine own mark on the written page. 



211 



SUPERMAN 

IN me is dust wed to a master's will — 
I am the m.arriage of the Sod and Soul 
Of all earth's aspirations — and in whole 
Clairvoyant to chaotic wisdom still — 
I thought that 1 was human man, until 
Above my being rose with surging roll 
Eternal powers, while below them stole 
Clay — in my body, to itself fulfil. 

O thou most dread, and yet beloved decree 

Of self-created Life, I love thee well. 

O thou most profitable state, I see 

A beauty in thee which I cannot spell — 

So mystically wrought with Heaven to be 

Held by the chains of the earth-bounded Hell. 



212 



THE FUTURE 

HEAVY pressed One, our hands unwitting touch ! 
Our shoulders feel not, with their bended weight, 
We scarcely think on Thee, who art so much 
The guerdon and the donor of our Fate! 
With meagreness of mind we hesitate 
To mark the riv^er's current, through its rush 
That flows in silence from its source to mate 
The sinking sky who meets it with a blush. 

O tender future, by the eyelids fast 

With heavy dreams, thou wilt not give to us 

The direful burden of the out told past ! 

A Greek Athene in whose mind we thrust ! 

For cipherless eyes, that question thy forecast 

Thou lendst a wraith of beauty luminous. 



213 



NATURAL PROGRESS 
I 

DAILY the course of some refrequent plan 
Makes us remember, we are bent as reeds 
Upon Time's river where the world succeeds 
And the enamoured sun is held in span, 
For fugitively, do we seek through man 
Still for his being's uttermost desire, 
Whose burning oil, upon a fateful fire 
Rose into flame, when first his world began. 

For lo, there is a purpose in the whole 
Which doth out wisdom all conceived thought, 
And ushers the gold stars above the seeds. 
Whether earth work for our inherent soul. 
Or for self comfort which through us is wrought 
Since there incurs a purpose in our needs! 

II 

Through usages of those most vernal ties 

With which earth holds the matin and the moon — 

The passage of her life from night to noon — 

Or eve when she doth close her children's eyes — 

Or alien use which natural law defies 

Of stranger human breathings — whose hearts meet 

About her throne like birds whose bound wings beat 

Athwart the rampart of the hidden skies. 

214 



Natural Progress 215 

Therefore when seasons have their fruit recalled, 
And silent years have all their waters led 
To surge about our knowledge of her lands, 
Let us remember, where her will has walled 
The bastioned sky, our purpose overhead, 
And the reseizure of our lips and hands. 



Ill 



Whyf ore are we of voluntary calm 
Desirous, while with certain fortitude 
Earth doth apparel us in this her mood — 
And chains us to acceptance of her aim. 
Letting life fall on us in bounteous balm, 
In easing comfort for the highest clay. 
Making a motion for us, night and day. 
Till we lie pillowed on her dusky palm. 

While we, by conceit like the moon's lost light 
Would but remake ourselves a lamp to guide 
Tarnished and sacramental through the dark — 
And trumpet the great herald of our flight 
With noisy vision, sounded far and wide 
While she unto our silent pleadings hark. 



IV 



Yet there are matters foreign to the Sod — 
And what shall be replenished year by year, 
Though it be smaller than a broken tear, 
Or some adventurous vision of a god, 



2i6 Natural Progress 

With which man goads himself by staff and rod, 
And wears the sandals of his own advance — 
And comforts thus his tiredness in trance 
Of alienation from the clamberous clod! 



For who can tell, but in the ill advise 

Of his attainment, and incarcerate war, 

Rising between his body, and his dream, 

He may exalt himself to sacrifice, 

While peace shall reign, as it has done before 

Bearing the martyrs down its quiet stream 



With beauty in a wilderness of mind 

The inward heart upon the world looks forth. 

And as progression turns from fervid wroth 

Conquers rejections as a thing unkind. 

Thus nature, parent to the guiding wind, 

Seems parent to the astral blooms of sight — 

And sounds with which we make aerial bright 

Our thoughts, which we by thought to earth do bind. 

For later blooms of an austerer coast 

May rooted in our firmer wisdom grow. 

And hold no commune with material earth 

Save, where their Mistress, they have made her most, 

To chance it with the winds, in which they blow 

And hold for them their secret — Death, and Birth ! 



Natural Progress 217 

VI 

Colder than fingers that have scarcely held 

Fruitage, or leaf from the primordial tree, 

Are these strange fingers which have ceased to be 

The soul-cup bearer to the passing world ! — 

Are all leaves shed, and have all trees been felled 

Within the pallid forests through the night ? 

Where the loos'd spirits do their form requite 

With gnomes, whose heavenly beauty they have spelled ? 

I fain would walk within a forest vast — 
And hold communion with the sun and trees, 
And as I slept, my dream should round a space 
Towards boughs of heaven, where they hang at last — 
While hearts round spheres, with a love hastened ease, 
Engulphed in either forest's resting place. 



MY CRY 

NOT now, not yet, for me, but I am grown 
In lordly pride, I see thee — I rejoice! 
Thine the loud music ! Thine the plenteous voice ! 
Thine is the seed, and sod, and seed re-sown! 
Thine the completion ! Thine the crown and throne ! 
Thine all the impulse! — Thine the kept estate! 
Thine the kissed pilgrim waiting at the gate! 
Thine all the world, and all the sky, — thine own ! 

O, how can I be sad, when thou hast come 

To tilt the mountains over and climb on 

Like some lost genii stalking to the cloud ! 

I speak thee, in these vain words and am dumb ! 

Nay, I but tune my trumpet Protean 

I beckon to thee! and I call aloud! 



218 



Other Poems with Sonnets 



THE MAKERS OF TO-MORROWS 

THINGS that are unseen, unknown, 
Atoms that scarcely are wed, 
Hidden as crocus bulbs, grown 
Under the soft soil's bed, 
Thinner than tears unshed. 
Softer than softest silence 
The music, when heaven sorrows — 
These are the gods, of the realms and the sods. 
The Makers of To-morrows. 

The world whirls, circles and crestward 

Is hung in its large blue sky. 

Day travels westward, and westward, 

And time exists but to die, 

Yet the past 

Will last 

For the tombs of the Ptolemies stand high, 

On the Sphinx's breast 

Will the ages rest, 

And their opulent glories still try 

To obscure in clouds of hidden shrouds, 

The Makers of To-morrows. 

Ye who have come from the womb 
Give to the past womb no thought. 
Ye who have great deeds wrought 
Look not ahead to the tomb, 

221 



222 xhe Makers of To-morrows 

Take but the present indeed, 

Enjoy now whatever will come, 

The glories of spring 

In remembering 

Are naught when her voices are done! 

See, the fair flowers, they grow 

Blossoming, exuding perfume 

An ecstatic moment of bloom 

Even with ye, even so ! 

And Fall has a harvest to reap 

When she must haste to her task, 

O'er the fields still the sunlight will bask 

When the freshness of summers die. 

Think not of dull winter's snow, 

Skies in their anger may start, 

Some are so -soft 

That in falling, aloft 

They will melt, ere they lie on earth's heart! 

While under the mire and marrow 

Growths which are hidden from sight, 

Forces of birth will bring to the earth 

Rapture, and bloom, in a night — 

And these are the gods, of the realms and the sods, 

The Makers of To-morrows! 

Then ever glory in crimson ! 

Ever expand to the light ! 

Cloaked with mists, 

The darkness lists 

To sorrow, and bear the night ! 

But stumble in the darkness ! 

Run up high heaven by day! 



The Makers of To-Morrows 223 

For do ye think on heaven's brink 

Crimson Hghts decay? 

Whetten and breed the mighty! 

The present with its might, 

In the full of noon-tide 

Worship the gods in sight ! 

Lavish in achievement 

All that ye have won, 

Eat as Atalanta 

The apples of the sun. 

Beneath past glow 

There still shall grow 

A veil, in the midnight's train, 

In the hour of dew 

Fresh wills come true. 

To make the world again. 

Phantoms of trembling import, 

Passing to find the clay 

Take their forms, in the risen morns, 

And arise to meet the day! 

These are the gods, of the realms and the sods. 

The Makers of To-morrows! 

O Nations born of the body, 

Peoples one in the clay, 

All of your life, like an arch of the sun 

Will glory to pass away. 

Out of earth's womb, as a mother, 

Out of the first fresh mire, 

There will come the birth that will make of earth 

Her flame in the mouth of fire! 

Then, from the pulse of your effort 



2^4 The Makers of To-morrows 

Reign, in your sovereign noon. 

Give to the height of your being 

Your strength, ere the night bring the moon. 

In the flash of the moment of triumph 

When growth is at full, ere she wane. 

Spill all alloy, in the moment of joy, 

And free the bound impulse from pain! 

Ye, who are masters of wisdom, 

Thrivers of gold and of rule. 

Your slow civilising intention 

Shall bring forward the mass as your tool. 

And as they pass on to the higher, 

The next generation shall pass — 

As tears on the rose in the midnight — 

As mist on the dark sea's glass — 

For the decay respreads its creation 

To nourish the earth once more, 

And the child comes out of the mother 

As ever it did before, 

And the things that are dim and silent, 

And the tool that is hidden unseen, 

Shall be the great 

Who shall make the fate 

Of the earth, and its old redeem! 

These are the gods, of the realms and the sods! 

The Makers of To-morrows! 

Things that are unseen, unknown, 
Atoms that scarcely are wed. 
Hidden as crocus bulbs grown, 
Under the soft soil's bed. 
Thinner than tears unshed, 



The Makers of To-Morrows ^^5 

Softer than softest silence 

The music, when heaven sorrows, 

These are the gods, of the realms and the sods 

The Makers of To-morrows. 



IS 



BROTHERHOOD OF NATIONS 

FROM East to West the pale winds run 
And hardier storm winds from the sea, 
While summer's day the sacred sun 
Sends to the season's granary, 
The years like birds are winged forth, 
The hours are nestled as spring bees, 
Till the long poles lean south and north 
And meet, in star rimmed majesties. 

Draw nigh, the citron is in bloom. 

And olive trees on southern isles 

Where life no winter can consume 

Nor cheat them of their rounded smiles. 

Beneath their leaves, that swing and sway. 

Between which stuccoed roofs appear. 

The later pilgrims on their way 

Have come, to find the cherished year — 

To bask in it, and let it feed 
Some succour, for their fear of harm. 
As round the kernel of the seed 
The buxom earth winds her bronze arm — 
Nor hasten life, but warm her chill 
And constant seizure on the root. 
Until the southern air shall fill 
The world, with perfume of gold fruit. 

226 



Brotherhood of Nations ^^'^ 

Yet now before their course they drive 
A spirit utterly unshriven — 
For they would wholly be alive, 
And driven beyond earth, are driven 
To northern lands with lesser greed 
Of nurtured life, and stronger soul, 
Where clearer spaces seem to breed 
A larger light, beneath the pole. 

Thus, long with chiller passion wed 
The earth her higher Nations pass 
To colder climes, that have withheld 
Our knowledge from the bending grass ; 
And tortured us with more conceit 
Of self constructed measurement, 
And lent us from the spheres that meet 
A purpose, strange, without content. 

Therefore the north whose snows are pure 
Must give us promise of surcease, 
And on her breavSt, such life endure 
As cannot die and may not cease. 
From cape to cape of Labrador, 
We seek to find a resting place, 
And look upon the twin stars' face 
From what we are, and were before. 

O valiant sun that tends us on, 
And valiant moon whose life is lost 
Usher us through the darkened dawn. 
To where the day by night is crossed ! 



2 28 Brotherhood of Nations 

And as we circle, span by span, 
The rounded globe, with greater pain 
Let us remember how there ran 
The rivers, from the southern main. 

Therefore, with comets let us sit 
In council, till we learn from them 
How yet to make our bodies fit 
To kiss the coldness at its hem. 
For long, in barbarous splendour wrought 
Of time's spoilt struggle up the south. 
No need there was, in flesh or thought, 
Save to have knowledge of her mouth. 

Now diademed our wayward mind 
Which lastly doth all life caress, 
And has the eyes, which make us blind, 
In piteous thought's wide wilderness. 
For here there rise forth phantom forms 
To question, as they ask her balm, 
And through the thunder of their storms 
Can find their peace, in rainbow calm. 

So with her snows that catch and gleam 

In varied light the jets of noon. 

She tangles dreams, within a dream — 

As shadows web in the white moon. 

And tired we, who so far see 

And travel, for the uttermost, 

Cannot find rest, whose course should be 

To sleep, down the far western coast. 



Brotherhood of Nations ^^9 

For we more vacant in our need 
Cannot the silent word aver, 
How growth doth make all bodies bleed 
To pass the spirit down to her. 
And hunger led by hunger's guide 
A deep desire fixed in want, 
Soars o'er the snows dissatisfied. 
Seeking her long accustomed haunt. 

And to the many lives that pass, 
Would make the murmur lost, and free, 
That far below where grows the grass 
They might bend under citron tree. 
For host to host together lie 
Where suns the olive in the clay, 
Where life did first with earth combine 
To meet the vision of the day. 

For earth, with ghostly eyes, did meet 
The stranger life with hidden soul. 
As now we in the north compete 
To watch the meetings of the pole — 
Ere we, in thought, were hurled afar 
And by the mind were bid to see 
The tangled boughs beneath the star — 
Which make the northern citron tree. 

And from the body's warm caress 
Turned we like ghosts, to meet the good 
Of a contagious blessedness 
Which thought held in her alien brood. 



230 Brotherhood of Nations 

Till over long, confronting earth 
We saw the passage of her breath 
Kiss the wide open lips of birth, 
And the white lips of waiting death. 

Meantime, the heavens lean above 
In starry vaults that seem eterne — 
Then, in the heart of spheral love 
Shall not our pulses meet and burn 
Till stars seem citrons of the south, 
And dimmer vaults their olive trees, 
Where sunset opens the earth's mouth 
Which dawns caress, with ecstasies. 

For in the time, ere earth shall wane 
She shall our million lives imbue. 
Incarcerations still retain 
In splendour of her song and hue. 
And when she passes that same course 
Which long has held her in her reign 
Her soul shall be as ours, which force 
From death a rapture beyond pain. 



Two ghosts appear on emptied space — 
And first embrace with mouth and hand. 
And then they turn each willing face 
To what appears as snow-bound land. 
And now they cast abroad their gaze 
And seem some vision fair to see, 
As if more ghosts within the haze 
Stood in long groves of citron tree. 



LIFE 

OLIFE, enfold me once more passionately — 
Forgive me! 
What if I should have mistaken Thy achievements, for thy 

purposes 
Sorceress? 

Sweet-breasted mother, lean lowly, tenderly, caressingly, 
Over my head put thy hand, O enchantress, O mate 
Consume me, believe me — 

What if Thy desire should not be this, my fate? 
If Thou like an innocent, pale cheeked girl did conceive me? 
Forgive me, — pardon me, — 

Suffer me once more only to be to thee gladness ! 
Suffuse me, delude me, and harden me ! 
Make me more crude to thy striven-f or guerdon of sadness ! 
Take thou compassion — 

Put thy red lips to mine Life, till I drink of thy being. 
Grow thy confusion, 
Pygmynise me in my entity. 

Burden my soul, if inheritance hold such delusion, — 
In the night I would be but the surf washed up from the ocean 
Unto thee! 

Great-hearted warm Life, O Life of maturer emotions. 

Mistress Life, wife Life — O poor, and most pitifully chidden — 

Soft child of parents unseen, hardly discernible — 

Make me more kind to Thee — Thou of aloofnesses hidden, 

Sacramental, unreturnable ! 

231 



2 32 Life 

O, live me — forgive me! 

Take me back unto Thee, once more prodigally, and re- 

pentingly, — 
What I have known of Thee I have lived, O now live me! 
Test me, bone of Thy bone, thee representing, 
Heavenward soaring! 

Rest on my wing, O maiden Life young and adoring. 
Cling to me Life, frail, girlhoodly — trustingly! 
See for the clouds pass by, they are only the front of the 

vapours — 
Kiss me, thy sweet body tapers 

From rimmed hip to hip, O slip to my adamant shoulder! 
Cling closer, bend nearer thy holder! 
The wind goes over the blue sunset hills from me gustingly. 

Life, baby- Life, featherweight, infantile, creepingly! — 
Lo, I ascend to my sleep with Thee sleepingly — 

Take me. 

Child-bearing make me — 

Forgive me. O, lo when the dawn wind cries to the morning 
awake me! 

1 would forsake thee — 

Ageless Life, older than Adam and Eve in the garden, 

Forgive me — pardon me, harden me ! 

Sphinx-like Life, with eyes of a cat, looking at 

All my imperfect potencies, exigencies. 

Behold, I trow. 

Communicant with all, I become, as I bend, to ascend to Thee 

now — 
Forgive me, pardon me! 
I rise! — I pass on! — I exult! — and I come to Thee! — • 



LINES 

O, IF I only knew that thy mouth would never more fail — 
I could draw Love down to me here, I could hold him 
for ever — 
For the day is warm, in the blue of the sun's golden fire — 
For the night is white with the moon , and pale with the stars — 
And passion cometh to Love, at the lip of the lyre — 
— If I only knew that thy mouth would never more fail — 
— If I only knew that thy life would never expire ! — 

Feel ! The kisses they fall on the long cold chalice's brim, 

The chalice is Life, — is Life Love, awoke in thy face ! 

It glories thine eyes — it waves the soft hair on thy brow — 

It touches thy lips with shade poppies — it rests on thy chin — ■ 

It laughs in the tip of thine ear — and O how 

It magnifies all, to supernal delight, and eclipse! 

If thou liveth on — why my heaven is here, — it is now! 



233 



STRUGGLE 

WHAT mighty impulse broods about our ken? 
It seems as if a tear could make the sea — 
And one evaded moment's agony 
Turn, like a bastioned army of the sands, 
To gather to the lands, 
In times of men. 

Above thee, Silent One, the clouds pass by — 
Yet is thy voice the thunder in the sky — 
And from sweet sleep's luxuriant beds of tarn 
Doth rise thy ancient body, with a sigh 
So deep, that in it lies humanity 
Endless like balls of yam. 

Then, thou dost walk abroad in mighty state. 
Thy name is Struggle 1 morn and noon and late 
Thou castest thy dim will, from void to void. 
And in thy giant arm the little world 
Nestles to thee in littleness, and grief — 
Nestling to thee as if to be upheld. 
Till as a doubting child may find belief. 
Toys with what thou hath toyed. 

The Moon and Sun, the frequent stars that shine 
In vigils for themselves : — these all are thine — 
Thou hath creation like a snake defied, 
And gathered lilies where white stones have died, 

234 



Struggle 235 

Thou, who awaketh from the morning seas! 

Thou hath these things, and thou art one with these. 

Thou art the foeman to love's hidden hate, 
The anguished ardour of the desolate ! 
The stars look for thee, in their long embrace 
That century on century did trace 
From earth's created self, up unto thee — 
Doth gaze the mighty tumults of the tides 
That lie in under-ocean, and there hides 
The soul of man within thee, as this sea. 

Korn with the weight of knowledged ignorance, 
Slowly before thy steps the spheres advance, 
And hestitating, in thy sudden eyes 
God as a tear, that in its fair self dies 
Turning thy purpose into sympathy, 
Makes thee for all, — until we cease to be. 



i 



PEACE 

FROM elemental substance which was wrought 
Collateral with birth, the early earth 
Did habitude her kingdom and did bear 
All diverse substance in a dim desire ; 
As dawn doth light the white torch of her fire. 
The great vermilion substance of the dearth — 
The fragile emerald of the hills by Tyre — 
The turquoise sea, that like the sky did wear 
Her garment every morn continually — 
The night that cast her shadow on the lea — 
The golden Sun and the pearl Moon, the Bear, 
And the great Northern Dipper towards the pole — 
As manifestial visions of her soul. — 
Then sprang the loose Nile 'tween his banks of clay 
And sang the seas about their continents — 
Ashen Vesuvius gazing on her fire — 
The sweet low waters in the hurtling bay- — 
The mountains restless, and the hills' contents — 
The valleys, and the deserts, and the shade 
Which gazed upon them ere their front was made — ■ 
The coral reefs that lie by ocean clift — 
The forest trees whose leaves behold the spring — 
The accidental clouds that their face lift 
Into the vault of the dim blue's arcade — 
The winters, and the summers, gold, and green — 
The red, that bore the sunrise to the rose — ■ 

236 



Peace 237 

The grey mists that to mists were as a screen, 
Purples that make the vapour as it throws 
Its palpitating heart upon the scene — • 
The lands of citron, and the lands of myrrh, 
The pallid sands of Ethiopia — 
The cedar woods of Greece, and Lebanon — 
The isles that sun their fruitage in the sun — 
The Pamirs, the late groves of Tsin and Tsa — 
'Egypt that holds the sphinx, and worships her — 
The black sea and Tung Hai in between 
Krishna's, and Buddha's land of ancient light 
Grown desolate with quiet, where they sleep 
With togaed prophets still and neophyte. 
For worship of the Karma in their dream. 
Upon their graven altars bronze and white — • 
The place where ancient eyes were prone to weep. 
While all the eddying waters, of that hour 
Conceived the passionate East her lotus flower — 
For gods, who bent their eyes upon the shore, 
Knocked also there upon creation's door — 
While Sultan's turrets, down the Bosphorus poured 
Even as life, their wreath of golden wrath — 
Sprang there the Western Empire unafraid — 
The Mediterranean, in his northern path 
Stole to where Peter in his House adored 
The She Wolf of old Rome ; the while was stored 
Crowned Greece with Euxine and Eugean shade — 
Spain in her splendour rose, and boomed adrift 
The crest Gibraltar, and the Pyrennees — 
Mohammed there, his prophet hands did lift — 
While mild eyed Venice rose from out the seas 
Joining the great Levant's Hesperides 



238 Peace 

With Doges. Then the Astrian with war 

Of upturned face such greater realms foresaw, 

From France, and England, Holland, and The Hague, 

In spotted cloak of night, his banner bore. 

Dreamt for himself a dream eternal, vague 

As Caesar's — Alexander's; while there leapt 

The jaws of nations on like Lions' mouth. 

Ate their own North, chewed on the bone of South, 

And tortured Europe to the continent — 

While in the west dim land, like a far nest, 

Impulsed the eagles' wings for fresher prey — 

For further on, the great lands could not flow, 

There fell a hush. No nether continent 

Could lure the resting eagle from repose. 

Siberia put on her cloak of snows — 

South Africa, as if an instrument, 

Lay in the hands of powers, part as foes, — 

And as a prism, beyond Panama 

Republics shone in South America — 

From Cape of Good Hope unto Labrador, 

The Earth was bounded by the chain she wore, 

The chain, whose first link was the people's weal. 

The second link its outrage, and its war. 

Yet greater good, the nations still foresaw, 

Commerce built peace, for barbarisms' flaw. 

And as the mammoth nations singly grew 

War interspread amongst them, till the gold 

Of progress, which at first did hesitate 

With simple matter for its single cause, — 

— That matter which had made the hills aspire 

And formed the globe we live on for its growth — 

Being the only implement it had to use — 



Peace 239 

So that no longer what was could abuse 

Itself by self, — but turning into thought 

Might grow a potency, — undreamt, — unloath — 

To succour aid, — since there was nothing wrought 

To differentiate construction, save 

Its own complexity. Thus have we caught 

Reason to guide, still let her guide beyond. 

She denizened her nations o'er the wave, 

She spilled her life less frugally for naught, 

Now let there reign the reason which decrees 

No slaying of live life, though it return 

Cargoes of wealth, or that for which we yearn 

In pride, and empty vauntings, of the mind. 

But turn, and in a simple wholesome way. 

Let matter in her highest form of life 

Fulfil her progress through the bodies' clay. 

Till she shall manifest a pregnancy 

More ripe through man, for conquerage and sway — 

For in his form is larger entity, 

Grow thinking selves, and reason shall be found — 

As in the first, sky, ocean, cave, and ground. 

Assumed from her progression! Wake! Be free 

To call down halls of long heredity 

The stimulated soul; until behind 

The peace of nations, body turns to mind, 

To cast dim chaos back her rags of war, 

As if they were not worth the search to find, 

Leading lone matter towards a guiding shore! 

Therefore since peace shall help to keep life's sway 

In unprevented manhood for the mind, 

As nations in their weal do royalty. 

Let us have peace, and round about her lay 



^4o Peace 

Our riper judgment, and our clearer sight, 

Tutoring earth no further to delay, 

Her progress through the still abortive night. 

Nor making dismal flaunt of loyalty 

Detain progression from her unseen height 

Of soul and sense, that gather to the close 

As vistaed petals of a whole world rose 

Whose pollen breeds investment of more gain — • 

Perfumes of thought which not in vain we slay — 

Since after the long summer of her pain. 

Her natural rupture, her enforced decay, 

Are all we have of her, to use, and train 

For commerce, as the goods of memory. 

Let us have peace! And since she, for the mind 

Is a Levant of Harvest-Renaissance, 

Behold with less encumbered sight the past 

Which was the purpose of her blood choked trance. 

And what we glean from what we leave behind. 

That stronger still our reaching hands may last 

To crown the brow of succour overcast ! 

What goods shall follow, and what gains increase 

By spell of peace, and wars' futility. 

Has footstep even now on labour's shore 

In wide invention for facility — 

Placing a great machine at nature's door, 

And aiding commerce, by the simple use 

Of nature's weapon of complexity. 

Following as she has done before 

The tideless vision of each common law 

Be it for us, or for the land and sea. 

For substance is the primal cause of Earth — 

War was of use, while great war brought forth dearth, 



Peace 241 

And threw the dust of empire's sightless wrong 

Back in their face, as challenge for the strong, 

New bands, in which united men might hold 

A wiser empire of a larger mould. 

But now, in separated groups they stand, 

Man no more for the state, lest it command 

The lessening of himself, or integrate 

The individual, who is the state! 

And so crown peace the culler of that good 

Which saves to use, and also to bring ease: 

For after quest of golden Argosies, 

SymboUed in iron portents, steam, and steel, 

Which work by coalescence of the brain 

Until it brings these things surcease from toil, 

As nature engrafts air above the soil. 

For, what need, if through man's progressing sight 

He has already gained goods war brings forth, 

Now futile to his upward onward course 

— On both the victor's, and the victim's land, — 

Should he have war, with all its emptied blight ? 

Or battle raise again her hammered hand 

To nail the profit of the conqueror — 

To roof his empire with a larger beam. 

While peace, a minister of subtler thought, 

Stretching her arm by friction undelayed 

Can grasp the trophy of a stronger board 

Than any armies bastioned can afford 

To roof alike the splendour of her dome, 

Bulwarking both the empire and the home? 

Or on her breast, with strategy as child 

Can gather in the spoils which war defrayed 

By spilling coffers of the nation's core, 
16 



242 Peace 

While cool eyed justice, like the scioned north 
Leaves still the emptied purpose of the blight 
With bloodless import firm and undefiled, 
For which the mangled corpse of armies fought? 
O peace! Forgive that long thou art debarred — 
That man with fated soul, of struggle fought 
To gain, what thou hast folded in thy thought — 
Raise thou the dagger which his hand has marred, 
And place it from thee with a gentle mien. 
Glad that he kneels to thee, at length to glean 
Thy teeming temples' sufferance of prayer! 
Thy time has come, thy way he did prepare, 
Since now life needs thy soul as eremite 
To take with thee, her long stilled inward flight, 
Where science leads to show progressing stars 
Whose battles are to cast their nightly wars 
Of undiscovered, and predestined light: 
Know thou thyself O peace, whose gracious right 
Is burial of swords on fields of clay! 
Erect thy temple on the swinging world. 
That in thy nether hand, be simply held 
Time's sickle to erase progression's blight. 
With face of royal guise, and bloodless grey. 
And eyes that gaze through lesser storm afar. 
Ride on men's living bodies, as a car 
Unto the perfect sun which makes his day! 



THE SONG OF THE DEAD ON THE BATTLEFIELD 

O DECENTLY put us away! 
We are the dead, we are lying 
Here on the battlefield, yearning 
For burial sweet as our brothers. 
We are the fallen, we know not 
The outcome to earth, and the living, 
Of the great onslaught which slew us 
Sapping our bosoms of pain ! 
So we lie still in our slumber — 
Battle scars over our bodies — 
Numbness over our feeling — 
Waiting for final decay! 

O decently put us away ! 
Ye, who shall rise on the morrow. 
While we lie still in our slumber 
O, — rest us well for the night! 
Fire moon-rise o'er the meadows — 
The sky is a flame of desire — 
Decently put us away 
Underneath longing and sorrow, 
Where we shall see no light breaking 
On the sun of another day! 
Moon and stars are resplendent ! 
Pools and rivers translucent! 
Bathed in the black night's quintessence 
243 



^44 Song of the Dead on the Battlefield 

Earth and Heaven a-quiver 
Lean now one to the other ! 
But we lie still in our being — 
Dead now in death of the body — 
Never now speaking our meaning — 
No more hearing or feeling 
The pulses of men, or their voices — 
Irregular somnolence, stealing 
Over our palpitant heartstrings — 
Bending our sobbings to silence 
Wait we the sun of no morrow. 

Decently put us away! 
Cold boards well fixed to the coffin 
That which has entered decay — 
Let us have damask to wind us 
Folding our limbs in its texture! 
Death flowers around us to crown us ! — 
White flowers, yea, and bright crimson, 
Purple the passion blooms also, 
All of the pomp of life colour — 
Crocuses swathed in red yellow 
Bathed in the lap of the sunshine, 
Place o'er our corpses, about us 
Where the cheek deepens to shadow 
On the side where the chin line is ended 
Along the battlefield 's grasses 
Dampened with blood of our wounds 
Lay, the soft blossoms of morning 
To expand and to flush as they once did ! 
See! We are cold! You may hold us! 
Arms stretching over our shoulders! 



Song of the Dead on the Battlefield ^45 

Lips burning chill on our fingers! 
Hidden face dropped on our bosoms! 
Bowed o'er the hearts lost to motion! 

Decently put us away! 
We argue not now for the future, 
Think not of reason to give you, 
Why we should yet wish for glory! 
Let it suffice, that we enter 
Portals covered with shadows. 
Curtained yet from our seeing 
While we arise on no morrow ! 
Now, we know naught of existence — 
Stilled is the wind of emotion — 
As stilled is the aspen tree slender, 
So stilled is the pulse of our soul ! 

decently put us away! 

For no night waits on the morrow 

Bringing us ought of repletion, 

To replenish a life we have spent ! 

Give to us then, our due honor 

Ye who shall rise to the day — 

Ye — who have fought through the battle 

Which led to the dark of our tomb ! 

If we had lived, we had met you — 

Worn your triumph of laurel — 

Come in victorious greeting — 

One in the triumph of day! 

Yet, still shall we lie with dead hate, 

War, and disgust, and rebellion. 

But no more shall suppression 



24^ Song of the Dead on the Battlefield 



Be with us, haunt us, or rule us, 
Uninfluenced by submission — 
Infranchised for ever from custom 
Breeding control as high wisdom, 
Lie we as still as no motion. 
Waiting for burial decent — 
Decently put us away ! 
Into the doubt and the darkness — 



THE GULF STREAM 

THE world has a beautiful breast I Lo here on the sea! 
It is soft with the fluid of vortices, from atoms made free, 
Save to join them and hold them in love! The great wave and 

the rain, 
And the kindly long wind with his trumpet of pain. 
Shall here have surcease of their foul agony, 
And the ripped rough red crown of the sun on the sphere 
Shall look lovelier here! 
O, delicious sweet wane 

Of the pillowous current of storm, like an opalic vein 
For us that we know when we come from the lea, 
Here urges its wrath into calm, as itself in the spray 
And flies with the wings of its spirit away! 
O nipple-red sun, thou wouldst have us to drink 
Of thy light as a child at the brink 
Of thy day. 
On the sea of thy endless long year ! 

Within the southern seas — the seas to south 

The Gulf Stream lies, like a slim softened mouth 

Blue as with drouth — 

Tangleous Gulf Stream, what wilt thou here, in thy multiform 

flow? 
Drink and be filled ! — Thou art water thyself, save as show 
Of thy prismatic passion, and closure of waves — ■ 
As a mouth in the waters of sea, thy crestial lips lave 

247 



24^ The Gulf Stream 

O'er thy mesmeric pallor of brow, 

Weird as the temples of Heaven, whose clouds are as thou — • 

What wilt thou with chasms of flow, as the spaces work now? 

Succulent Gulf! — ^grassless and herbless sea, 

Drink in the mioist air that like foam dazzling widthless, and 
breathless. 

Doth make thy wave coast 

Like a ghost, 

An atmospheric straight lea — 

Stretch yonder arift to the heavens, thy form stirless — and 
yearning — and deathless — 

For watch how the hurtling caught wave, like a baby asleep 

Wanders down to the deep ! — 

It sends itself to the weariless worlds from afar 

In sidereal love as a star. 

Does it dream of the surface of ocean, or ocean crossed floor? 

Nay, the babies laugh on as they sink to the bottomless level, 
and creep 

Back again, with the winds that like music from bugles out- 
pour 

Their honerous challenge to motion and sound as before. 

Where the lone Gulf Streams are ! 

There is dust in the air, for the wind has gone out o'er the 

sea — 
And the mind projects into heaven — propitiates into the 

light- 
But behold — ^the blue withers to night — 
Veil after veil it is breaking across, to be free 
To spit in the face of the stars. 
The history of the dim bars 
And foam of the world breaks the hid mystery! 



The Gulf Stream 249 

At tollic mountains rising beneath the Gulf Stream 

In statilic redundalence, why should ye children of primal 

lands laugh? 
Was not the past one great thee — 
When waters turned back, with the lure of the crest of them 

half 
Towards the moon and her dreams? — 
Towards the great sunken sea? 
As the ocean pours on to the lea, 
Ye did heave your wide bulks, then were free! 
Then the mighty stars dropt, as a berry might drop, from the 

tree, 
And lo, as at sinking of suns, the rimmed oceans are red, 
They arise now to mourn for their dead — 
They come up with the night, and the dawn, 
The surge of the waters, that form a great bowl, and surge on 
Till the stars that are lost, rise as continents lost in their space, 
And the Heavens, her hips between the chaotic warm arms 
Of the spaces grows mute, as if conning endeavours and 

harms 
That should make them look more, on her face. 

O waters of chance, how pure and how cool, by fresh lands 

Drip ye your lip dropping surge 

In succulent prayer, and what diurnal caresses do urge 

The smooth rippling tides, that follow the sea to the shore? 

Ye are sunned on by suns — 

Ye are dwelt on by dews, and the store, 

Of a garland of hours, doth measure the wreath of your crown. 

Till the white waves, in white foam, like white asphodels pour, 

On the head of the clifis, and the down! 

Yea, who gazing on thee, has concept of thy multiform chance 



^5° The Gulf Stream 

Thy circumfering trance 

O sea! — 

Thou doth reach like a serpent, and bury the swan necks of 

Peninsulas, where 
The Isthmuses lie in thy lair! 
Thy night plottings with storms — ■ 

Where rocks clinging above, lean like land longing to thee — 
Thou moulder of forms! 

And in thy green hands, are the sands of the lands, 
The porches of stars — 

Where dead skulls like jewels have lost all their light, 
Till the day 

Cometh forth to return them, their prismatic ray, 
And thou falter, and fail, while he lingereth there 
For he touches thee too on the height ! — 
On the height of thy spray 
In an all loving way! 

What guideth thy course 

O sea? what shadowy will, in an orb 

Like a motherly face 

Can absorb 

Thy infantile force? 

Spender of change! what fellowship hast thou with loss? — 

All pervader of life? — There are three 

Who have fellowship over the sea. 

The sun, and the moon, and the air, 

They will make him a cross — 

For lo, in his chatter and tumult, of range 

They will silence his voice to a prayer — 

For the moon pulls him high, and the sun pulls him high, 

And the air lent him now, as a garment to wear, 



The Gulf Stream 251 

Is a breath of himself into which he must die! 

moon, thou succoured the past 
Thou wert mother to him ! 

And 0, red sun die last 

Since thy satellite air, shall recover him fast — 

For already the clouds which are filled with the dim 

Are his envoys to thee, 

When thou touch the last star 

Which is sunken to earth, O sun, thou shalt see that he travel- 

leth far, 
For the continents rise, which were stars, which were set. 
In his oceanous fret, — 
He would moor to thy bar — ! 
And forget ! — 

He would touch thee at rim ! — 

For all shall be thine, when the fair years shall fall — 
When the earth meets the sun and the sun meets the All ! 

But thou, simple Gulf Stream — simple, and sinuous, thou 

1 come back to thee now — 

My tired head lies on thy warm breast, to sleep, and be still, 

Lull me with bees in thy waves ! 

Hold me in caves 

Where my spirit shall connote the will 

Which is killing thee now, and shall kill 

Even me, till my body shall fill 

My incarcerate overplus soul! — 

And thy ripening rill 

Shall lie dead in thy goal ! — 

Nay, since there is slumber no more, in thy pale arms for me 

Let me sing thee myself, as thou sang me the song of the sea ! 

O how passionately doth the soul 



252 The Gulf Stream 

Make a Gulf Stream lonely and warm ! — 

With its bleeding frail juices, and sluices — ^its eddyous storm!— 

polluted pale wisdom of self — hybrid and curving, loose 

moons 
Of the foam that but gathers to swoons ! 
Beating against the walls of self, I ride 
For ever on the omnipresent stream — 
Sometimes within the current's dark, for hours I hide 
And lie apart to dream, 
Until the end of all surrender mine — 

1 sink at last into the Gulf divine. 

In the Gulf Stream of Life, the senses lie bosomed in under 

its effluent tide 
For what more sensuous, sinuous, than these sensiate waters* 

warm breast? 
Here, slumber itself with its soul finds rest, 
In the Stream bridged between ocean, and ocean, 
In this succulent winding way — 
In this wild contagion of motion 
Half smile and half sway — 
In this nest of the eeried seas — 
In this line of the foam and toss — 
In pliant line which the deep seas cross. 
As a bird swinging south, and north, this suppliant line — 
Delirious, and divine! 

Phantom women of Sense, 

Five, in the depths of the sea, 

Wherefore have ye learned, to chatter, to chide, and to sway, 

Yea, for what consequence? 

Have ye not selves to reform, and to keep ye all day 



The Gulf Stream 253 

Working through, as we work on the lea? 

And great hair in the twilight to curl ? 

As ring upon ring, the sunlight like hair of a girl 

Is swept by the clouds, in their nebulous circles, from hence ? 

Have ye not cheeks, and red lips, to vermilion in dark. 

And white brows to remoon by a thought? 

Have ye not strange eyes, to mark 

With a long line of lashes that curve into naught ? 

Have ye not wrought, 

Your fair bodies, by form, of a motion, whose undulous 

whirl 
Kept ye quiet from self, with your search through the coral 

and pearl 
That have trust of your forms? 

Or do ye but wave your crescentine wills, and give sway 
On the waters of day? 

Skin of the Waters! how silken, thou hast made these girls' 

veins. 
That their sequented, slimness, restrains! 
Didst thou know in the night, of thy storms. 
How One with an odour, and One with a taste, and a thrill, 
In the garments formed for thy daughters, 
— Skin of the waters ! — 

And One, with her voice like the echo cast free in the hill, 
Came over to me? 

And One, O the last, with her form in the foam of the rill 
Came under and held me with hands 
Till I dreamt no more dreams of the way and the shine of the 

lands — 
Till I utterly lost all my goals, for the quest of thy spill 
And surrendered my will? 



254 The Gulf Stream 

Gates of the furtherest seas, where do ye close? 

On hapless waves of sullen ebony? 

Or make ye glad, with purple, gold, and rose, 

Where is the gateway of the furtherest seas? 

Like it, the soul 

Bows down unto all passions, surgent, powerless, 

And lets the foam waves lap, all climbing even 

That out of all, the ages wake and bless, 

Redowered man until he find his heaven! 

Let waves compassion, make ye no more plaint, 

Where is the gateway of the furtherest seas? 

No more control will let ye ebb and faint, 

I watch the gateway far across the leas ! 

I have no yearning for aught else beside 
Abyssmal calm, 

senses no more strive 

To hold the gold bowl, in the wandering sea — 

For oceans, upon oceans yet 

Shall roll 

And make my soul, 

Not thee ! 

1 shall forget, 

O ye five girls, that whirl, 

About our world, 

And comfort take from me — 

And grow almost unto one golden girl — 

That tempts with voice, and touch, and lips vermilioned in 

their curl, 
And ears that listen to the shells the level deep has 

held, 
And smelt the sea-weed matterous drift, and balm 



The Gulf Stream 255 

That the Sargasso sea has taken — and the seas to the far 

south ride — 
Wherewith all things are created, that in ye can be alive! 

Pallid Sleep bend down, — O bend down, to the Gulf in the low 

set tide — 
Lift ! Arise with me, to the languor where all is kind, 
These girls at last shall fail, as the waves with thee defied — 
Thou Sleep ! thou consumer of Sense, that gathers and drifts to 

mind! 

Spatulent Gulf Stream 

Wreathed with white wave foams, that crown the white head 

of old Dream, 
Wouldst thou bathe him in blue skies of swell ? — 
Where bright heaven comes up, and bright hell 
Runneth down with a yell? 
Wouldst thou mirror him there? 
Sound, sight. 
As if they were hung with the tiniest globules of motion, and 

hght— ? 
The senses recede, and are free. 
Yet so pliant they are. 

They seem the reflection of star beams, let fall from a star. 
For his sight in the foam is not lost, though it be not his own — 
For he marks the long predestined sight, of a colour in tone — 
And heareth the diurnal earth moan, 
With her rotten steep burden of lands, her reciprocal burden 

of lands, 
Her burden of life rimmed high ! 
But the sea climbeth too, 
It climbeth to touch on the sky: 



25^ The Gulf Stream 

It holdeth, her dew 

Which Dream touches until he stands moist, from his Triton- 

ous bath in their air — 
Singing songs loose of bearing, and sense. 
Now singing on sea- weed strings! 
The shells give him odour and scent ! 
The brine the inherent long taste ! 
Singing long ! singing fair ! 

He winds the great sheaf on his song, of the waters awaste, 
Singing loud ! singing far ! 

He echoes the cavernous bulk stones, with voices he brings 
And heaving himself, in a torrent of fret 
For a strung instrument. 
With murmur of chants from the sybilline sirens departs, and 

goes thence, 
For sconched ears, set on the strands! — 
So the dreams are gathered from ye 
Senses of deep ! 
What we have, in our sleep 
Has come out of your burden of weeds, 
And your grey mists that creep, 
From the will, of our needs 
From the sea! 

Dead, like a storm that has perished. 
Dead, like a mouth that is kissed 
And that no longer now kisses nourish, 
Over the Gulf creeps the mist: 
Tangled as pale lips forbidden 
To press in a tender full line — 
The tarn of the sunlight is hidden 
And cannot more shine! 



The Gulf Stream ^57 

Down, down, O Gulf Stream! Eddying weight! — 
Lest thy waters now loosen, and climb ! 
O curved waves run, like the will of fate, 
Out of the wind of time ! 

Light, again in the sensiate Gulf, 

Light, all over the sea! 

Light, — as if there mystical love 

Hid in the cloak of the foam, 

Purpled with wings of the dove 

Came restlessly home ! 

Light as the sun in his prism, kneels on the waters of tide. 

With blessings of infinite wisdom, where curves of his sickles 

abide, 
As the waves of the air, he swirls, 

As the dance of the Silver-Sari, danced by the Indian girls, 
The silver sickle of time here reaps by his endless blight 
The spirit of all of the waters, to spear them, and hold them 

to light — 
With spirals of serpentine cleavure, the Gulf Stream runs on 

to the moon — 
As once, with its pain, and its leisure, its bloodless veins drank 

of the swoon 
Of the Senses, which gave them their pleasure, and wrought of 

them death, as a boon. 

17 



YEARNING 

THE mountains hang about me, as the thoughts 
Which keep my body from thee, dearest love; 
How far they reach to Heaven ! God above — 
They reach, and reach, and then they seem to climb- 
As if their highest peaks were arms ; I know 
'T is best I stay from thee, and yet not so ! 



258 



THE QUAINT HEART OF THE NIGHTINGALE 

THE quaint heart of the nightingale, 
He knows not, mad, unconscious bird, 
The poets dare not sing of him 
Unless their songs be called trite ! 
But on a fresh time-summer night, 
The memory of Eden, heard 
Above the earth, below the clouds. 
He wakes the ghosts of hearts, whose shrouds 
Are pale as the moon's vapours — pale — 
The quaint heart of the nightingale! 



259 



SYMPATHY 

IS the rough Spring come again ? — 
With her little green leaves, that suffer their pain, 
Twining the mad wind between their hearts' calls 
"While the rain of April integral falls? 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Pale is the white birch, and pallid in grey 
The poplar leaves shift to the sun as they sway, 
The streams' weeping willow is slender and white. 
She lets her leaves fall on the stream in the night — • 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Wild oak, and maple, and olive forsooth ! — 
Dark trees aspire as anxious frail youth. 
Sucking in juices, with herbous long root 
Seeking each other in strangulous moot — 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Bark magnetising, with ravenous pore — 
Pulp of the pine trees — leaves of the sycamore, — 
Spreadings, and sheddings, for coverture free — 
Amities whispering, bush brake, to tree — 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Motionful bendings of poplar, and birch, 
As silver willows the summer streams search — 

260 



Sympathy 261 

Questioning ever sky's limitless face 
Regally fallen, under her grace — 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

0, sap of life, Spring, rough vernal recomer! — 
Dost thou but weave, as the leaves weave the summer 
Hearts in the springtime with lavishing portals — 
Green arras hid, from the stringents of mortals? 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Workmen, whose hands dig in labour's old sore — 
Large hands, besmirched with the earth's clinging gore 
Semblant to trees in what they conceive, 
One in their breed as one to receive 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

White hands unused, and pale hands unbidden 
In froth of the foam of life hidden, and chidden. 
Hands as white leaves, with the green leaves in under — 
Mystical hands of a wandering wonder — 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Rough lips with orifice ugly, it may be, 
But fashioned to press to the lips of a baby. 
Lips as cracked leaves, pallid, intersought, tender, 
With sprouting young shoots, sent by wistful Spring's sender — 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Corporeal lives, with the burden of weavings 
Griefs, and self shadows, within their sun sheavings — 
Turning to sorrows of others enthrall — 
Shiftings of life, in the interstice small — 
Sympathy — sympathy. 



262 Sympathy 

Blue green leaves soft in their mangonist touch 
Deterring the harshness of gnarlings o'er much — 
Magnanimous reachers of feels pitying 
As marvelling winds with their mouth full of sing- 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Seekings for sun under serpentine branches 
Seen only as scales, on the leaves' habitancies — 
Pursuivant efforts which snake darkness covers 
From outward reward, of world unseeing lovers ! 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Sweatings of brows, as the hot noons of raintide- 
Pelted from spirit as sun which the rains ride — 
Golden nobility sweats of clod workers, 
Heavy with spill, as the dreams of soil shirkers — 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Running feet ceaseless, as leaves in their flutter, 
Love domiciled with impatience, and clutter, — 
Home feet that tend on unreasoning quest 
Tormenting of self, for peacemaking unguessed — 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Hearts longing with elder reburdenful measure, 
Hearts laid away from unmitigate pleasure^ 
Seeking the joy of a shelter serener 
Dusk as the evening leaves draw from the greener 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Unfulfilled novices' yearnings and waitings — > 
Meditative with mood drifts hesitatings — 



Sympathy 263 

Sappling boughs finding some future eternal 
Unrecognised in dispersions revernal, 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Balm of the trees, a medicinal quiet 
Fall upon doubt, with a subduing fiat — 
Sophistic closures of maze inphiltrate 
With dove inter-cooings as if to a mate — 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Resorting to stillnesses, minds take their covert 
With constant appealings to madnesses overt — 
As veins of the leaves which in slender forks hold them 
Ever resuscitant changure shall mould them — 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Crime, daliant cloaked in her scarlet strut gear 
As leaves spotted with premature red in their fear 
Of oncoming autumns blaze globe flame of glare. 
Under the trees makes a riot of air ! 
Sympathy — sympathy ! 

Artists who strive for the bread of old Heaven 
Finding not that, which by mortals is leaven, 
Living in sky, sea, tree, leaf, and flowers. 
In sounding of air waves, and shadows of bowers! 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

They who are list'ning for gnomes in the trees — 
If spirits of death may arise at their please — 
To mourners' dim ears, and eyes touching as dead — 
The sight, and the sound, of the leaves' hearts o'erhead. 
Sympathy — sympathy. 



264 Sympathy 

All who would come with all burdens of sense — 
Grievous hurt lives with their passions immense — 
Given for aims, or given but merely 
That living by them, may become the more dearly 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Inventors, and searchers, who reach at the rim 
The unknowable, as the trees searching the dim- 
Hearts, as the roots in their primal delusion 
Making the vibrating whole of earth's fusion! 
Sympathy — sympathy. 

Is the rough spring come again? 
Here in the world of a larger life's pain? 
Heavenly green that shut heaven looks over — 
Love is the only narcotic we owe her, 
Sympathy — sympathy. 



THE NEW GENESIS 

THERE was a God once — ^lying in the East — 
And Chaos was about Him, and no world 
But grey voluminous vapours ; so the heart 
Was silent in the God, and only time 
The soul-throbs of His being, made Him live. 
Then came a change, for He desired. Lo! 
The rivers ran with water ! — Heaven wept ! 
And all the lakes and oceans they were filled ! 
And all the streams and pools were given life. 

And He desired, waking from a sleep 

Of ages inconceivable, and Earth 

Grew and grew green ; and seasons, winter, spring, 

Summer and autumn took their separate tasks — 

And learned to bear their load of forest, marsh. 

Meadow and mountain; while the day, and night, 

Placed by their brow their brilliant sun and moon 

As rounded mirrors to behold themselves. 

And lo !— The God desired All ! All ! All ! 

And lo ! — ^the God desired and was man ! 



265 



AN INCENSE SONG 

BEHOLD, thou Lord, my songs no more shall greet thee 
In plaintive runes of unaccustomed rhyme, 
For I have seen the dark blue spaces meet thee 
And I have heard Thy heart beat upon Time. 

The body Thou hast wrought me is a lyre 
And sensitised the clay Thy hand hath wrought ! 
The yearning heart is vibrant with desire 
And her desire is to Thee, and her thought. 

Behold, O God! All light and life art of Thee 
Praised by the waving censer of the Moon, 
Behold for the chaotic soul doth love Thee 
Swayed by the finite senses into tune. 

Behold! Behold! The Earth and Heaven do know Thee 
All of the shackles of the world are Thine — 
Behold ! For Thine idolaters shall show Thee 
By adulation that Thou art divine. 

The Human Thou created clay wrought mortals, 
An Adam who hath eaten of Thy Tree, 
Behold! Like wind they sway Thine open Portals 
And, being wisdomed, are but One, with Thee. 

266 



An Incense Song 267 

If weakness Thou doth banish by Thine ardour, 
And molten sin Thou drive from Thy create 
What large rebellious thoughts shall they not harbour 
Being of all, save virtue satiate? 

Will they not come and Thee dispel and shatter? 
I, even Man, Thee slay, myself to rise? 
The jointure of Thy spirit and of matter — 
Becoming from mine own self to be wise? 

Thou poor. Thou fragile God, some star shall tremble 
In its rotation round Thine orbed throne — 
And all the wakened Earths and Hells assemble 
In insurrection, for Thou art Their Own. 

O Thou most childish God, in pity 
If so, I, Man come to mine own by right 
Shall I not like a sovereign take Thy city? 
And claim supremacy of Rule and Might ? 

Behold, O God! The Sun, the Sun is falling— 
The round ball Thou hast wrought mine eyes to bind 
As I to Thee in grown strength am calling — ■ 
The light is passing, which has kept me blind. 

O Thou, Thou fallen Lord, no more I need Thee — 
For am I not Divinity and Love? 
If Thy Life 't was I drank, why should I heed Thee ? 
Thou art below me and no more above. 

Watch Thou, I say it was a deed of error 
Which made me underneath Thy Rod and Rule, 
A vast, primeval Modesty and Terror — 
Which made me seem a pupil in Thy school. 



268 An Incense Song 

But Man is like Thee, he, shall he not pity — 
When he shall enter Thy dominions in 
And take possession of thy crown and city — 
Thou dust-choked idol, pity Thee this sin. 

Shall Man, the Supreme, with Thy court around him 
And the blue spaces and the ladened air 
Not feel exalted pride of birth surround him 
And see Thee in his likeness to be fair? 

Shall he, shall he not lift Thee in his mercy? 
A lonely Monarch while he is divine — 
For Thou his secret want, can he disperse Thee 
Though shackles of the World no more be Thine ? 

What is the compensation for Desire, 
For Longing and the Will to be afraid 

Thou! Thou answer me! Was Nature's fire 
Which burnt in aspiration but to fade? 

1 need to yearn, O fallen Lord! O fallen! 
I crave Thy Secret-Presence to my love, 
The morning and the evening star art callen 
Yet Heaven is below me and not above. 



Thou bend beside me — Man, O Lord and tell me — 
Nay, stand Thou, while I kneel before Thy feet, 
I claim the right for some force to compel me 
That I may see a vision more complete. 

This purple robe take from me and this sceptre 
That move the spheres that hold the Buddha's dust 
When Zeus a human found, he did accept her 
That he might pleasure passion and distrust. 



An Incense Song 269 

Thou — behold, Thou Christian God, I anguish, 
Wilt Thou not aid me? Thou? — more vast than they? 
For, till the real Christ came all hearts did languish. 
Thou — ^to whom later generations pray. 

Behold, behold! for Earth and Heaven do know Thee — 
All of the shackles of the World wert Thine ! 
Behold, for Thine idolaters did show Thee 
That by their worship Thou didst seem divine. 

Behold, O God ! Some passing star may reach Thee 
Guiding the wise men to the higher East. 
The waving censer of the Moon shall teach Thee 
Nature is to Thee, O Lord, as Thy priest. 

And I, I, God, shall I not kneel before Thee 
With plaintive runes of old accustomed rhyme? 
For Thou, my Impulse, shall I not adore Thee 
When I have heard Thy heart beat upon Time? 

Behold, we stand before the Secret Throne! 

Behold, I kneel before Desire to rise! 

And with Thee, passing on to the Unknown, 

1 feel the yearning for a Paradise. 

Worship, O God!— 
Behold, O God! 

Worship, O Lord, behold! 



ASCENDING LOVE 

THERE are fields of Orange Lilies 
Where the hot breezes blow — 
In the heart-time, in the throe-time, 
Bending golden glory low. 
In the heart-time, in the thirst -time — 
Where the meadow grasses quiver 
Mad Orange Lilies grow 
By a river! 

Many a throstle, many a word 
From some soft brown-throated bird — 
Branching music waking midnight, 
Meadow music waking day, 
Whimpered vows that may be broken, 
Whispered promises unspoken, 
Hesitancies of mutation — 
Waft the Orange Lilies' way. 
Mad Orange Lilies grow 
By a river! 

Musing there alone at evening 
When the dusk suppressed the water, 
Musing there alone conceiving 
That the Earth was Heaven's daughter- 

270 



Ascending Love 271 



When the very heart did falter 
With intuitive beHeving 
That the primal Earth was better, 
Than the Earth that men should alter- 
Etherised a presence semblant, 
By the water with its flow 
Passing o'er the bracken bendent, 
Bosoms breathing, eyes below — 
Hair a-misting, — lips bow twisting — ■ 
Dimple cleft the chin astroe — 
Bestrewn stamen-astralation — ! 
Mad Orange Lilies grow 
By a river! 

Cerise darkness, gash of crimson 
Strumpets into orange bode. 
Into vine of scarlet gold run 
Mazement unafraid bestrode! 
Hush, the lapping of the waters 
Eyelids droop o'er eyes of sloe — 
Petals wither 'neath sun's altars, 
'Neath the sun of fire throe. 
Syllibants unuttered seethe. 
Tethered trees with leaves a-bluster, 
Bounden pulses joy bequeath! — 
Drench of stars to dimness cluster! — 
Mad Orange Lilies grow 
By a river! 

Bracken waste, O braken tender 
Press with urge her coming feet ! 
Urge with air her figure slender, 
Restrain to still, my pulse retreat — ! 



2 72 Ascending Love 

Wanton waste of passion holy 
Makes a tryst with melancholy — • 
Iron manacle of wrist 
Earth cut bruises intertwist ! 
Happy juicv^s! saps of sluices! 
By the hungering soil comprest, 
Wing away to interloses, 
Frightened bird within the breast. 
Mad Orange Lilies grow 
By a river! 



Voice of woman as the wind-drift 
When it drifteth over mow — 
Of the grasses, in the mowrift, 
Tossed by Summer's wilful toe. 
Voice for lovers' lip-completion, 
For seductive meet of mouth — 
Susurration of repletion 
Wassailing the face of drouth ! 
Sweet fermenting, love concerting 
To a draft of skyer dye — 
Wilder fantasies inverting 
To sound flagon of a sigh ! 
Mad Orange Lilies grow 
By a river! 



Love stakes higher than emotions, 
His the great immotive mind. 
He, the stars of night reoceans 
In the darkness man leaves blind- 



Ascending Love '^IZ 

Tilt the ball of sunlight closer! 
Lift the lily as its cup, 
Golden cup as Heaven's doser, 
Nasceous loot, the ground licks up! 
Brown bird on the wing a-quiver, 
All the foam of song asplash, 
Meadow mourner, sky adorner, 
Lifts the lid of evening's lash! 
Woman sweeter, heart completer, 
Foot-a-mountain as a doe — 
Cloud mount than the fire fleeter! 
Mad Orange Lilies grow 
By a river! 

i8 



A SOUTHERN ISLAND 

HUSH ! for there is no light, and the isle like a great bird 
Takes flight into the sea — 
Listen and watch for the morning word 
Yellow, and orange, yet scarcely heard 

The sun took over the lea. 
And the evening wind has stirred. 

How many hours of peace here can we dwell apart? — 
Hid by the southern hills, crossed by the southern wave? 

A little hour perchance, or long in need of the heart 
For the pulse leaps up and reclaims what it had at the start — 
Longing, and hunger, and then, fulfilment and strength for the 
brave ! 



Late in the afternoon, the moonflower leaned from her tree 
Making her body a trumpet, long, and slender, and white — 

She drooped among her leaves as she called to the moon on 
the sea. 
Arise, O moon, arise, the beeches wait for thee, 

And the melancholy tide for thee is filled with light — 
Come soon, come passionately! 

Here along the main the cedars are red in bark, 
The banana bushes are rimmed by a round banana crown — • 

274 



A Southern Island ^^5 

Waist high under the blossoms, red, and satin, and dark — • 
The palm to the heavens listens, as the moon to the moon- 
flowers hark: 

The cacti with the weight of a million thorns leans down 
To the sod of the seed-pods mark. 

Lovely! The horn of the plenteous ground is full 
Of the bounteous mother earth and the burdenous bulbs she 
breeds, — 
Finger plants that are bright, and scarlet, and brown, and 
dull— 
A million spices the myriad marsh plains lull 

As for their need — 
Fruitage the gourd-rimmed cherry, flower, and fruitage, and 
weed — 
Air-vines soft and clamberous, grey as the seaweed's mull. 

Soft ! For the air itself is full of its own long call ! 
Heavy as air can be, a parasite of the south. 

Heavy about her body like a vaporous cloak let fall, 
Perfumed with white of lilies, slender, and supple, and tall, 

Or as a kiss of the fire on the lips of an untouched mouth — 
Weird, delirious, motionful, contagious, and nurturing all. 

But the land like a great bird swings 
Its train into the deep — 

The feathery deep of its level — is as bird on the edge of its 
wings. 
Watch! For the black and the blue bird circle, the red bird 
sings. 
And the sparrows twitter in sleep, 
And the land bird flies and is gone, in the cover the darkness 
brings. 



2 7^ A Southern Island 

Who is it that lies 

Like a gourd across my door? 

With her two red breasts, and her skin Uke an oily cocoanut 
rind? 
Has the moon forgot to shine, and the darkened clouds grown 
more? 
The white leaves by the wind 
Are shaken, and now in their heart are sunken her eyes! 

Yet, why should I not forgive 
For there in the heat of the noon 

She brought me cherries, and moonfiowers stemmed from 
their tree? 
Even life that is kindly must torture to make us free — 

And the moonflowers and cherries are lying struggling to 
live. 
In the still where the shadows swoon. 

And from the sky comes a piercing long shaft filled with 
light 
The created pinion that brought 

The end of my thought, 
And lulled me to sleep with the night. 

Where is the nest of the lands? O is there an island more? 
Deep was the soul's content, desirously fulfilled 

Ere the hour disappeared, and we lost the wake of its shore. 
Spaced in an ocean of anguish the shoulders of Atlas bore — 

Child if thou wilt ! — 
Thou canst return with evening, as surely as before! 

But the island nest is empty, the last of the lands has flown, 
And I shall be gone with the spring, when thou shalt returned 
there be 



A Southern Island ^77 

For I wander north, and northward, where the piteous wind 

has blown, 
My mind from the lure of fruitage, of flower, and grass, 

and tree, 
Though the south shall hold for ever the bird in its ecstacy! 



A SOUTHERN SCENE 

SILENTLY before the cottage door 
The tidal-river seeks the boundless sea — 
Within the distance, where this silver lea 
Withstands the ocean's pressing waves no more — 
But yields unto the flood force monarchy. 

Silently upon the silver strand 

That just divides the waters meeting here — 

Silently upon the waters near 

The moonlight shimmers, in a golden band 

Mirroring the moon, the moon of southern land. 

And up, and down, the tidal river roam 
The murmurs from its waters yearning still, 
To pass the banks on the seaside and drill 
Through the cold sands, and reach their ocean home 
While through the dark there cries the whippoorwill. 

Behind the cottage lies a tangled space 

And there wild vines and trees are interwed — 

With rattlesnakes and wayward lizards bred, 

And there couched to the ground, the panthers pace 

Their path into the distance with sleek tread. 

A jungle is far spread — ^Yet to the west 
A crown of trees, with soft white blossoms fair 

278 



A Southern Scene ^^^9 

Are waving silently, now here, now there — 

It is an orange grove on the low crest 

Of a small slope the planters raised with care. 

And in the sky above the placid moon 
A thunderstorm is brooding, passing slow 
Clouds meet each other and then onward go 
As if repenting of their wrath, nor soon 
Will break the storm upon the world below. 

Since yet the very loveliness of light 
And rains that brooding ever never fall, 
Throw a cast uncertainty on all 
The beauty of the southern tropic night, 
That deeper the rapt senses will enthral. 

A life is on the river — on the land, 
In undertides, and in the silent grass 
That groweth lazily where sunbeams pass, 
And yet it is alone, without command 
The fervid heat breaks on the heart alas ! 

The moon has now arisen to full grace 

And in the orbed whiteness of her heart, 

Rising above the stars I see, there start 

The mirrored light on thy own brow and face — 

Shining for me, more softly where thou art. 

The southern stars are now adrift — arove — 
With light that reacheth low upon the stream 
Its water bearing on the golden beam. 
And from the jungle and the orange grove 
Descends a subtle perfume and a dream. 



THE TRANSFORMATION 

LEAFLESS none of the year 
Stands the tamarind tree — • 
Older by far than the other trees that appear on the lea — ■ 
Old as the ocean itself, for its leaves like drops of the foam 
Slender and green, on their cycle of branches austere 
Tangling themselves reappear — • 

Longer than doubt and than darkness this trunk stands alone 
And the leaf of it blooms all the year. 

Now is it planted away from its Indian home, 
And the African shore does not bathe it in floods of the Nile, 
It waits for me here, in my garden, where stranger trees roam 
Through the sod with their roots, and to Heaven with con of 

a smile 
On my lone southern isle — 
Around it fidelios walk in a white stemmed row 
With their gossamer leaves one looks through, 
They protect it or marshal it on 
As a grove of young maples a yew, 
And I hear with no sound how they talk to the tree 
And do cheer it with hands underground ! 

Moody this morning, I came here myself to find ease 
With the heart of the trees — 

280 



The Transformation 281 

Before the young dawn, like a young saffron ghost had out- 
spread 

Her tent overhead, 

For I marvelled, and needed the sight and the sign which 
befell 

On bark things like a message, sent down to their region of air. 

For all night had I woke with my spirit, and seen the dreams 
fail. 

And my mother — the fair — 

Nature, I said, should revive and should bring me some com- 
fort to tell — 

Some understood meaning of passage, some unction or spell, 

That I further might turn from my mood. 

And lo *neath the tree 

There came comfort, and secrets that speak 

In the silence where tongues like convolvulus blossoms grow 

weak 
In their easure of sense — 
For the tamarind tree 

With its mighty grave force had leaned unto me — 
As the sky might lean down from a heaven intense. 
Or the sun take a pity to sea, 
Or an age that was passed should come over the dream of a 

man 
To speak him the wisdom he sought, 
As a bell, like a thought 
Which the waters of life as an essence o'er ran! 

Thence, there I lay down in the noon. 

For I could not behold 

The richness and rapture of sky, which was merging to gold. 



282 The Transformation 

And the sod by the roots of the tamarind tree, leant me grace 

Of a sweet resting place, 

And I slept, till the hour when the dreams of the noon lost 

their form. 
And the long afternoon came to pause, and around 
The fidelios circled like maidens of midnight and morn ! 
And from out of the tamarind comes such gold wine 
That it seems a libation, I drank to the good of each vine 
And all that had grown about me, till once more I sank 
In silence superb, at the trunk of the tamarind tree. 

How much stranger the silence by night, as I stand by my 
door ! — 

For the sun like a master, led day to his chamber of light, 

And the dusk winds outpour 

From the billows that sing of the west. 

Or rustle, and seems to unite a calm to a balm, 

As if drooping fans, waved through the space 

Where the tamarind tree with its under-caught boughs inter- 
lace 

The rift of the essence of sense which doth steal o'er the place. 

Making most unto me, the changure to evening, 

And joy of the kith, and the kin, of the trees which I long for, 
and feel from within. 

I have told my heart's burden to them, I am glad, I am free! 
By companionship sent by the crown of the leaves, and the 

brow 
Of the olive green wonder, more mystically olive turned now 
From the tamarind tree ! 

While fidelios keep their circle to marshal me sleep ! 
Yet Naena where art thou? Come close 
For the time of the tide of the day nears its end, 



The Transformation ^^3 

As small as a drop in a pool, till the wind and the cool 
Bring it back to our circle of light 
Which shall circle again — 

my negress, draw nigh, for the crown of the tears of the day, 

kept the last tear from pain ! 

1 would hear the broad sigh 

Of thy bronze breast, that seems like the main ! 
Come near to my ear, as the breasts of the earth which retain 
The slow call of her birth, and renewing them thus, in her high- 
est formed creature of will, 
Re-echoes it still ! 

And O Naena thy head I would have to bend over thy knee, 
When my head in thy lap, thou shouldst sing me to sleep as the 
tree! 

White as the call of the moon to the tide, 

Or the call of the moonflower is to the moon. 

The space of the land like a leopard leaps wide ! 

And the verge in the succulent spill of the gloom 

Seems bordered with cacti but thorned in their bloom. 

In the dark 'neath the moon ! 

And I feel, in their sphere where the red cedar lies. 

Thy mouth, must have bred a strange juice from their shape 

Like the line on the leaf of a southern grape-vine, 

Or thy languorous eyes, with their cape 

Of down drifting lashes that curve to their drape; 

Thou must somewhere be lost twixt the palm, the palmetto, or 

pine. 
Darkness brooding, and darkness nigh, 
Lifting above to its upper space — 
Then nearer the ground where the trees climb high 
Is a network of shadows and shade, like lace — 



284 The Transformation 

For the will of the night has no will to look down 

On the lonely desolate under-place ! 

Far aloft are the hills of the cedar more high, 

And the waters more low, 

Where I hear their tone through the faceless winds as they 

wander below, 
And the finger plant burns, and the air moss grows dry: 

Naena, come in, for the tamarind tree 
Seems more heavy with will austere. 

1 feel it has thoughts, of my will that must go 
Back to the year where it first did grow, 

A long lost Indian year — 

It is dragging me with a heritage 

Of hands that forget the thoughtless age. 

And I seem like a dust in its face to blow. 

Gathered again by the winds of chance. 

Beside its trunk a form bends low, 

I cannot behold or speak its trance, 

"Nay, who art thou grave form austere?" 

She slides round the trunk and is swiftly gone 

And now in her place has a change occurred 

For some one stands whom mine eyes have known 

And though she moves not, and speaks no word 

It is thou, my negress, my fear hath stirred ! 

O Naena why art thou there? Come away 

For the tree is changeful, by night and day, 

And growing so perfectly all the year through 

Must have a secret to keep, unkept 

By the leafless trees that in autumn are swept 

Dry and barren to bark, 

Till one hark, 

The tall sky walking them through 



LINES 

AT the time when the wet rain languors 
And the round dews grow thin 
A couch for thee shall be vapours, 
Let thy soul lay thy body within ! — 
Over the dark sea marshes 
Where the foam of the wave is a bride 
To the seaweed brown, cold, lying 
Upon the glistening tide — 
Where the waves long spent, once silvered 
Are the ashen of dead rose leaves. 
And the heart of the mighty ocean 
From the distant land slope grieves, 
There shall come a tone of music 
Which will make our lasting cry 
The lovely weight of sinking 
Through the slippery sands where we lie, 

O not ours the aspiration. 
Nor the giddy glow of the height ! 
In the dark was formed the creation 
That budded to bending night. 
Thy paleness saffrons the glory — 
The dim long reach of thy hair 
Softens thine eyes' endeavour, 
O let mine eyes rest there ! 

285 



286 Lines 

My head, from thy slim round shoulder 
Droops to thy crested breast, 
There shall my wild lips seek thee 
And there at last shall they rest — 
Thy voice with the will of pleading 
Grows weak to the mad lost naught— 
And O, in the depth of our feeling 
Should there again come thought ? 

Dearest heart, let us hunger to dreaming 

Till we lose what never was won, 

The palace of God above us, 

And the lasting heat of the sun. 

By the pale blue lake of the forest 

The pale blue harebell grows — • 

And sleep will bring the poppy 

To opiate our repose — 

Far from the maddening transport 

Of Babylon, and Myrrh, 

Let us still the endeavour 

That never brought forth her — 

Cold are the ashes of Caesar, 

And Cleopatra's fame 

Is only the woof that tangles 

The ghost of her lovely name — 

The roots are waiting the branches, 

And the faint troublous star of dawn 

Will see that we, like the ages 

Are bidden to begone. 

O lovely semblance feel not 
The plea of the spirit's hand — 



Lines 287 



Open thine arms, and live not, 
And do not understand — 
See on a brow, the garland 
Of leaves are mixed with clay! 
And even the bird now singing 
Oblivious is of day! 
Calm in the blessed failure — 
The incomplete made sure — 
Follow the will of all lovers, 
The passion and the lure. 

The purple hills are waiting, 
The green fields swept by wind, 
The calling of the waken, 
These things are left behind. 



THE LITTLE SCAR 

LO, what is this upon thy wrist 
Thou new-found Love of mine? 
A Httle scar, Hke a purple star 
Where the blue veins intertwine — • 
Upon the wrist, below the kist 
Shell-shade palm of thy hand — 
Where the white of the skin is a sky made pure,- 
Give me to understand? 

Far and wide over waste and moor 

Long as the land might be, 

Have I held a pipe to my full red lips 

To call for the lips of thee — 

Till the shadows fell on the couch of night 

To pillow the Darkness' head. 

And the dew-eyed Day, had wandered away 

Dreaming her Sun was dead — 

And the Moon came up as a fair light may 

Over the famished land — 

But this little scar like a purple star — 

How comes it upon thy hand ? 

I thought thee white as the driven snow 
That fell on the autumn's flame, 
And it brought the spring of imagining 
Back when with thee it came — 

288 



The Little Scar 289 

For in my thoughts have I held thee fair, 
And have sought thee far and wide — 
As a banished man, with fever can 
The thirst of a native tide. 

Yet, is Life a thing of Fate? — 
For the Little the Great breeds, 
And closed is the gate immaculate 
If the bloom be the dye of the seeds. 
Nor the sun shall shine, nor the moon divine, 
Nor the planets wake which are seven. 
If a little scar like a purple star 
Can banish from man his Heaven. 
Would, O would, in the endless not 
That we should be forgiven, 
For what has been cannot be forgot 
In the plane of the Pleiades even. 
For Man who is lower than Heaven far- 
Shall never understand 
The little scar, like a purple star 
On the white of a woman's hand. 

19 



ACHEON 

I SAW the great Acheon, artist, sage, 
Mounting the paths of knowledge, and the soul, 
And I did ask him, *' Whither goest thou?" 
Simply, in the way the systems roll 
About their sun, from out his bearded age 
He answered, *' Child it is to Heaven I go. " 

The stars were' lit on the grey cloaking night, 

The miniature stars, the fireflies on the grass — 

And through the dimness, I beheld his face — 

"To Heaven, " I said, "What mean'st thou?" Then did pass 

A flush about his cheek, and sprang a light 

Within his eye. "To Heaven, child?" " To grace." 

The moon arose and from the dark abyss 

Of pine trees lay her head upon the sky 

In open splendour — * * Night is but a thought 

That clouds our vision when the moons pass by." 

Acheon said, "And in such guise as this 

It is at length the universe is wrought." 

Thus ended so our talk. And he at last 

As if his words were driftweed on the shore 

Ended his speech, and in the still 

290 



Acheon 291 



His voice for me was silent evermore. 
Across his wide browned face a glory passed, 
Concording death and the eternal will. 



My God, to finger a dead woman's face, 

To let wild kisses fall in her deep hair, 

To feel the power of sex in death, to grow 

Dumb to the force of all premeditate prayer! 

And yet above oneself, to feel the grace 

Of this, nor pondering have the right to know. 

Acheon knelt, then with his large swift hand 
He touched her hem, a feather's weight of touch 
The dampness from the water of her gown 
Burnt him like fire, he, inoculate, 
Until the fire of contact so brought down 
Upon his soul a longing overmuch. 

He held her hand, he breathed upon her feet — 
His ear fell on her bosom, and his eyes 
Sunken on hers forgot the sights he saw. 
Such is first passion. From without came cries 
Of children all unheard, who passed the street, 
Such is desire for life, and such its law. 

He rose, and lit two tapers standing by, 

To place them at the altar of her head — • 

He took her hands, and bathing them in tears 

Wiped the lake slime from off their palms instead- 

He folded the large white arms still and high 

Upon her breast, above the beat of years. 



292 Acheon 

He hunted till he found a linen sheet 

Of coarse wrought texture, then with gentle pain 

He wound it o'er her body, her drenched hair 

Hung to the side, he fixed with tender care. 

He tilted the head till the chin reposed, 

And closed her eyes to never wake again. 

The children entered, motionless they stood, 
A brooding flock of geese from out whose throat 
No echo rung, till her child reached the bed, 
And the small arms were round her neck and float 
Of black curls on her breast. "My God, O would 
I too were as thy child!" Acheon said. 

He put the child away in tender wise 
And then he rose again, and while the throng 
Of small guests stood all motionless, was he 
Unconscious of their presences for long — 
Bent he his eyes once more upon her eyes 
Finding within them now eternity. 

Then passed Acheon onward from the tomb 
Telling to all he saw, what he had seen — 
And some believed him, others called him mad, 
But knowing well the thing had only been 
A revelation to his soul, he had 
No passion left in anger to consume. 

And so he blamed them not ; men seemed to him 
But torches for the soul, which lit, or still 
Unlighted, in the end should find their light — 



Acheon 293 

He laughed if they laughed, bent unto their will — 
Wept if their eyes for his own grief grew dim, 
And if they half saw — saw he with their sight. 

O God, what was his greatness? To live life 

As if it were the future and the goal, 

To lose himself in being, nor aspire 

To reach beyond the uniniate soul ; 

To take from others but what they could give 

Ever returning to them something higher. 

* * * * 

No eulogy can rise to praise the good. 
Their happiness lies in their constant strife 
To better grievous hurts, and uncontrol, 
Their thanks are oft to be misunderstood. 
He painted the one picture of his life 
Upon the canvas of a human soul. 

* * * * 

O lest my songs should desire a lyre 

Let me lie in the hills all day — 

And bathe my brow in a brook of fire — 

And pluck green myrtle and milk kind spray — 

For lo I lie underneath the sky, 

Nothing can take it away ! 



TOWARDS THE STARS 

O SPACE, that as a mother to a child 
Leans thy fair brow ! O beatific Time ! 
O Heaven that falls on man's ear as a vow 
Uttered in secret silences sublime ! 
O ethers gloriously eclipsed to now! 
O runnels from the belt of spheres bend low! 
And white moon's fragrance like an orison, 
Bend down — come down — lean o'er our world, as so 
The night her Nubian arm doth rest upon, 
Rest ye Exalted Essences for lo ! 
The earth waits for ye, with a lap of snow! 
The low sod grovels, and then learns to grow. 
Groping for spring for ye. In winter's prime 
The great birds dip their wanton throats in rhyme, 
And out of stillness come with rhythm wild, 
For ye ! Descend then, have a pity sweet — 
The grass upholds unto the roof to meet 
Her tenderous blades, descend O undefiled; 
Summer for ye has garnished her round dome. 
Descend O elements about whose feet 
Winds as the tendrils of the air make moan, 
Man has for ye a need that brings him home. 
Further his discontent to call ye nigh. 
The creature of a moment's wonderment 
He stands, and gazes on the nightly tent, 

294 



Towards the Stars ^95 

And at the orb transmuted to the sky, 

Nor dares he question, lest his voice should cry 

All the past ages emptied dissonant ! 

Come show him kinship, with your garments dipped 

In plenteous ocean, where the twilight sipped 

From sun bowl painted on with wine deep dye ! 

Bend, and come down, across the withering slopes, 
The withering slopes that wish for your descent, 
Because all things must meet to make them fair: 
Surely, a chosen place has lambent air? 
Naught can her latent ways of naught defer, 
She parts the dim fulfilments from their hopes, 
Heaven and Earth are disengaged by her, 
Her dewless pollen is on mountains sent 
For they grow pregnant in their solitude. 
And round their crown the spaces are as far 
As round the seas, and meadows, which still brood 
Waiting for the eclipse of some long star 
Hung in the vertex far! 

The slow great withering slopes loom, and expand 

By distance fanned. 

And weary as the bird upon the wing 

The winds die round their lonely harbouring, 

As if they also sometimes ceased to sing. 

O slopes then whyfore wait ye for this boon? 
Know ye not yet, the spaces shall be far? 
Have ye forgot that Time is lost from tune, 
And Heaven hung above the fartherest star? 
Do ye not well remember, Ethers came 
Between the lily, and the ancient flame, 



29^ Towards the Stars 

To part the shame dust from the seraphim, 
Or mocked ye never at the deep sea's rim 
To part from ye the Dipper and the Horn? 
O wondrous orbs Hke Death, serene, and sad, 
None marvel that ye hide your face from^ morn, 
Whose blatant passion is a thing unglad 
To those who drink the beaker past the brim 
And fail, with life's eternal recompense 
Viewless in the immense. 

Therefore ye Elements, whose ways are set 

Above compassion, pass; and withering slopes 

Look otherwhere in change, and chance, for hopes — 

If all the lost blue like a bird should fall 

Ye should not hear a murmur, nor should see 

A sign more bright on Buddha's enshrined wall, 

Nor yet the manger hid in Galilee, 

Nor any fond cloud have a voice to call. 

In else save thunder's omnipresent glee ! 

Mark, how ye murmur to a dewdrop's lips 

"Respond," but in the fullest sun it grows 

A thing of vapours. Even before the pall 

We are accustomed, to our lean eclipse. 

Forgiving Nature, for her weals, and woes. 

So space I would not have ye bend so low, 

Nor lose from airs, your help where they may grow 

The precious stems of bliss. Nor Time, O thou 

Who hast the danger of Eternity, 

Falter a moment on the cliffs of Now ! 

Or Heaven spread a speech for euphony I 

But let me sleep, sweet stars the while my brain 

Is fraught with ertia, till I swoon in pain ! — 



Towards the Stars 297 

Let me imagine that each light may fall 

From habitude exultant, upon all 

That wills to have it near, still can withdraw 

The groping hand from light, as if to twine 

Again upon itself, that some dear vine 

Of circles may rewreathe it to that law 

Of the supernal ! Nearer come again 

The long preheritors of destiny ! — 

Joining the sky and ocean as one sea 

Shall stretch their way by climb, and climb, to be 

Nearer to what calls to them from the main ! 

Harder it is in higher light — in more proximity 

To crevice use to our futility, 

And yet we rise ! We rise ! We see ! We see ! 

To moon and sun and skies, 

And as a tree 

Shadow the loose beams, which descend from ye ! 

Ah nay, no slumber crowns the balm of pain. 

The great consumer of our lethargy. 

We would not sleep — imagining ye to find. 

But rather would we sweep across your main. 

As in a storm the gullies of the sea 

Give forth the spill, and spilth, of all their kind! 

We sacrifice 

To make again, our own heredity ! 

We grow more wise, and twine our own skies round, 
We shall become as gods! 'T is memory 
That for so long has kept us from our own. 
Such echoes as affect our circumstance 
Have made our consequential failure sound 



29S Towards the Stars 

As Circian trumpet blasts across the sea 
Between this hfe and Heaven! Wake,, be free! 
Forget how long the toil has been for tone! 
Till we could cry across the steep hills' trance 
Across the withering slopes to power, and sight ! 
Forget the tenure of the outlived night ! 
Forget the claims which have our weak wills bound 
Unto the ground! 

Let dispelled records of the passing, lie, 

When they have served our aim, 

To show how progress came. 

How from the sod, the stalwart man walked high 

And pressed upon the eagle in his flight ! 

For faster in the far air of the sky 

We shall assume our change, until behold 

A moment is our mould ! 

A cloud our dye 

By which we are distinguished, and passed by! 

O soul, what are the withering slopes again? 
Not the thick mountains of predestined doom. 
By which both Abel and his brother Cain 
Are kept with spotted children in the gloom, 
Nor the gold apple-eating sons of Eve ? 
Not Nomad sepulchres nor still the tomb 
That opened on the third day, as a womb 
Ready to let the child of spirit forth ? 
They can obscure the stars' light by no troth — 
But shelter earth, until by our own will 
They call on us to mount ! — They do distil 
The balm of spirit, where the heart is wroth! 



THE WHIRLING ATOM 

A WHIRLING atom, through the will of space 
Circled the nebule which times embrace, 
Came past the will of stars, and time, and change, 
Looked on the ocean, and the lands that range 
The comet worlds above, and far, and wide, 
The alienation of great Heaven's tide — 
Sank — and became a face : — 
It wore a veil so barren, and so thin. 
That some who saw, saw not that there within 
The human was, till from the dark came sin — 
Stole in the eyes, as joy around the skies, 
Dropped on the mouth — then this strange face, did win 
Again its impulse, whirled, and whirled, away! 



299 



TO A CHILD 

STRANGER, why hast thou come from balmy sleep 
Whose kingdoms are the stars that drowse and burn, 
To habitate the body's ancient keep 
Wherewith thine eyes can but as twin eyes turn 
Their pleading wonder back insatiate ? 
Why not the white moon's rays inhabitate, 
Whose death was ere the cycle of thy birth 
Quitting this life, through which thy members pass 
Into volition in revolving earth — 
Why hast thou come to be with us alas? 
Yet, we rejoice, and thank thee, for thy fate, 
Kiss thy small hands and feet, forget thy soul 
And let thy tender-hearted mother have 
The right to hold thee to the cup of love. 
Witting not thy detention from thy goal. 
To which thine elders struggle for above, 
Treating the infant as a glowing wave 
Upon the ocean of humanity, 
That here may break, and there may cease to be, 
Yet goeth on unto the hidden grave. 
Yet, Child, be thou content, and do not mourn. 
Now are the gates all shut from whence thou came — 
Thou art incarcerate, and thou art born — 
Soon shall baptism chain thee with a name 
Which henceforth we will use to call thee ours, 
And ere long, thy soul glowing as of flame, 

300 



To a Child 301 

Held as the chalice of the petalled flowers 

Within the body's ashes, shall creep forth 

And once again resume an entity. 

Thou shalt be decked in white flesh, as the north 

In snows of winter holds the burning Pole, 

And if thou dream, thy dreams shall not be more 

Than slight man's vagrant yearning for the soul. 

Thou shalt assume a mind, to comfort thee. 

And a torn heart, to lie thy ways before — 

Lest thy now lost existence fret thy clay 

This heart of thine shall then be given pain, 

Thine eyes be given sight of night and day, 

Thy vagrant mouth a speech most frail and fain. 

And prayers, and tears, and sighs, shall guard thee 

round, 
As thou dost grow to suckle thine alloy. 
Faint passion shall have voice, and touch, and sound 
And if thou lend thine ear to antique joy, 
Which is the aureole above man's wound 
Thou shalt be glad perchance, in thine employ, 
Force me not more than this, to vouch to thee — 
For speaking of thyself, I tell thee all 
Which may have import to thy life's decree, 
Not one least sunbeam shall about thee fall 
Unwittingly, nor rain-drop seek the sea, 
Not one germ grow without thy knowledge, nor 
One seed without thee blossom to its pall, 
All wisdom of the earth is thine, therefore 
O happy little child be glad and free! 
Consequence is a secret to us all 
Beside its will all else is fugitive. 
But being so, can be discerned and seen, 



302 To a Child 

All the great summer stumbling into green — 
The winter seasons in which we do live — 
Promising spring's and autumn's echoing blight- 
Darkness, dew time, and light. 
O tender One, not ready yet to climb 
The ways of chance, scarcely so strong to creep, 
Whose grown soul holds the excess of time. 
Life's consequence in death, and greater sleep. 
Flaunt all the angels with their clumsy wings ! 
Take for thy rattle earth and all its bells ! 
Chew on the world, and for thy rubber rings 
Have thou the endless heavens and their hells! 
Take for thy playfellow a piece of space. 
And let man, as thy elder brother run 
Playing for thee his game of tag and race, 
' With thy rebounding ball, which is the sun ! 



ODE TO YOUTH 

THIS is my song, I lay it at thy feet 
O thou so opulent in trust, O youth I 
In strength and will ! 
As a cub-lion, nurtured in the spring 
On spiritual lilies, whose gold cup 
Was strangely given, — sweet, 
As Mary Mother, her most heavy child, 
Deep wells of truth, 

And in their whitened bodies, could hold up 
The blessed flesh and blood for some such thing, 
As beast of forest — earth, and braken-Nature wild. 
To feed upon, and still be undefiledl 

How loud a tone will pierce the heaven's assault 
Or cleave above the shrill bird on his wing? 
Thus, would I move 
The pale lips of my voice to cry of thee. 
Louder than some harmonious bassoon. 
Or weary water falling passionately 
From mountain gorges to the crushed ground, 
Or sky ascending rocket to the vault. 
Since life, of thee, has every need to sing 
The early burden of her tender love. 
The while a pauper, barter I the sound 
'Twixt Sun, and Heaven's will, and the desirous Moon. 

303 



304 Ode to Youth 

Yet still how lowly in my song am I 
Who can no more than stir perturbed calms 
To multitudinous shallows 
Of sounds, that echo through acoustic spheres, 
Or touching here and there a freshened note 
That intervenes mute music, make aware 
Thou, of my pleadings for thy blessed alms? 
Letting the tendrils of thy hair afloat 
Upon my senses, spell the sense of prayer, 
And lingering on my words convey its dye — 
Whispering softly of a light, that hallows 
Thy lighted eyes, till mine be filled with tears. 

Yet it is much, if I could speak of thee! 
O how like a pine forest is thy hair! 
Thy hapless eyes 

Happy, in their imprintment of thy dreams. 
Thy brow the whitened beach for thought's loose tide. 
Thy cheeks a moor of berries, brown and red 
Blent to their juices, for thy veins' disguise. 
Thy lips, like sunset when to crimsoned streams 
It folds, so is the pool of thy speech wed 
To silence, where thy wise communions bide, 
The line that thy full strong chin glorifies, 
Thy neck that holds aloft these gifts to be. 

O youth, how could a mortal voice be found, 
Communicant with heaven's highest aim 
Of beauty binding art. 

To mark for thee the paths which are thine own, 
To clasp thy hand, to look upon thy face. 
And for thy childhood's custom let thee go ; 
Where standing on a luminous mountain place 



Ode to Youth 305 

Life shall be seen by thee, self willed alone, 
Where unto thee, the thunders shall acclaim 
Their lordly noise of being, and the Hound 
The howler of the stars be heard below, 
For thou art elemental, and apart. 

Yet on earth's ocean wilt thou find thy peace. 
The blue entanglement of space and tone 
Will girt thy soul, 

That wandering forth into the Stygian years 
Belted the lands around their slender waist 
To guide the present's heave, upon its shore ! 
For it is kin to thee, and part thine own, 
And ere its mutability shall cease 
Famine shall be succumbed, chaos, and tears, — 
There since by wonder all shall be defaced, 
The primal earth at last shall rise from war, 
While the sun spheres her bosom pole to pole. 

But I know well the metamorphosis 
That thou must, day by day, play on perforce — 
Therefore my song may cheer 
Thine ageless soul, with comfortable truth — 
For when thou art apparelled in thy joy 
My heart leans lowly to thee in remorse, 
Although I worship also with alloy! 
My arm would pillow thy dear head asleep. 
My thought would cover thy dissembled bliss — 
Thy tortuous vigil I would pass forsooth — 
And light thy tapers for thee all the year — 
And kneel at sacramental shrines and weep ! 



3o6 Ode to Youth 

Still, thine own burden is thine own to wear 
As night her cloak, O individual 
Thy shoulders are 

Caressed, by some such weighty hands of light 
As if on every finger were a star, 
That none dare cast them from thee, lest thou turn 
And miss the kingly vision of that face 
Hidden in lovely wilderness of night, 
Where thorns are loath to lie below the hair. 
And eyes unfolded truth had made to burn. 
Or thou should'st carry all the mirage d earth — 
As some unconscious evening, Atlas shall 
From wider death unto serener birth. 

None shall forget who once have seen thee pass ! 
For, thy remembrance cannot swiftly die. 
Nor thy face fade, 

Which like a vernal effort of the May 
Is hung with bloom, while from the season's sun 
Shall slowly grow thy fruitage of July ! 
Therefore with trophies let me trim thy praise, 
If praise were well, from me to thee, alas. 
Whose harvest shall be sooner reaped and done ! 
I sun myself within thee unafraid 
To crown thee, with the laurel of thy day. 
And the rich wisdom of thine elder days ! 



OUR DESIRE 

WHY look thee, thou hast come, while I had thought 
Thou never could be bom from mothers' wombs, 
By which our tenements of clay are wrought 
For purposing our souls across the glooms 
From women burdened births, to earth enburdened tombs? 



All of us come with fragrant hearts franchise, 
Therefore are we expected like the spring — 
Prepared our welcome in our mothers' eyes — 
Gaily should every soul arise, and sing. 
For welcome done at its frail harbouring! 

Yet blind, and lonely, gazing on the sun 
Most of us hunger for our life's excess, 
Until our latest revelry be done — 
Then backwards gaze we, while our wills confess 
There was no joy, or pain, to aid, or bless. 

So through the dark, we traverse and are bound 
To visionary hope, self willed for cheer 
Lying beyond our veil of sight and sound. 
Whose dimness reaches gravely round the year, 
And leans aloft the night's revolving sphere. 

307 



;o8 Our Desire 

Wait phantom, for it cannot be as yet 
That thou hast come among our prison ways — 
Still are our doubts untutored to forget — 
Still crown we with our momentary bays — 
Our vacant pleasures, and our wanton fays! 

For all about us, is our ghostly dread, 
Our superstitious wisdom of the past. 
In which engulfed, we cannot look ahead 
For we into its armoured shape have cast 
Ourselves, and bodies, and our minds, at last. 

O thou great soul, behold our afternoon! 
We signed our seizure at the midday feast — 
Now will come night to darkly chain us soon, 
Then will at length dawn light, a lonely priest 
To gaze upon a desert in the east. 

Were thy birth now, Time would himself have deatli, 
And withered earth lie couching at thy feet. 
For the awakening of thy sad soft breath 
Which with its tone in heaven, the hours beat 
Beneath thy footfall rhythmically sweet. 



Yet wilt thou come, and round thy crowned head 
I see no aureole or diadem — 
No change in Nature, by thy passage bred. 
No leaning angels stoop to kiss thy hem, 
Nor any flower falter on its stem ! 



Our Desire 309 

Because thou art, the earth and air abide 
Within their rampant beings, still the same ! 
The pallid moons, across the sunsets ride, 
And no bird falters, crying loud thy name. 
Thou hast not changed the doubt, nor fear, nor shame! 



And yet, thy very promise would fulfil. 
A springtime of ripe heaven, rich, and full 
Would tint horizons like the daffodil, 
Unto the sluggard currents brown, and dull, 
Bring ease in rains their beings wake and lull ! 

Upon the viewless sky, the faceless winds 
Should weave such figures in their tapestries, 
Which every crimson morn, and evening finds, 
Where the dusked shadows swarm like equal bees 
And calm the mountains, and the waiting seas! 

Thy shade upon the shadow of the world 
Should tinge each tinging vision into form, 
With so much radiance of light upheld 
As makes the light in fanes of fires warm — 
And purples in the brooding of a storm. 



Preceding years, which revelations told 
By thy white hand, pointing to thy self birth 
Should all the heavens behind thy mood unfold. 
And to the clusters of sidereal dearth 
Make motion of star clusters, beyond earth. 



3IO Our Desire 

Stern wills pervade thy atmospheric soul, 
Which on our wills all exultations throw 
As the reflections of our frequent goal, 
Thy impulse for descent we strangely know 
Caught in the web of clouds, that round us flow. 

Therefore but lean with charitable touch 
Thy heart to ours, and we shall waking keep 
Thee all revealed to outlived splendour such 
As falls upon us in our dreamful sleep — 
Truth ! — Which the waves of life about us sweep ! 



THOU STANDEST NOT 

WITHIN my garden blooms life's tree- 
Thou standest not beside my door, 
Where oft, in fond expectancy 
We stood together there of yore. 
The ripe fruit offers of its store 
To my full lips' sufficiency — 

Thou standest not beside my door 
Nor is the bloom miraged in me. 

The wind touched leaves, sing like a sea- 
On the bowed branch the sun rays pour — 

The summer from the spring, shall be 
More ripe with joy's increasing store. 

And all the earth which grieved before 
Shall know of earth's regality. 

Thou standest not beside my door 
But as thou art in memory. 

On further moor, and vaguer lea, 
On ocean's disaffusing shore, 

Where bound waves call their anarchy 
With glistening seaweeds dank at core, 

On hills to dim horizons swore, 
No gladder life is to be free ! 

Thou standest not beside my door 
And winter withers my life's tree. 



3" 



THE WHITE FLOWER 

I CAME within a garden desolate 
And there I saw a white bloom swept by wind — 
It trembled into birth all unperceived 
After the snow had passed, to make the June. 
It was the afterthought among the flush — ■ 
A yearning for the past, and tears it held. 
And yet it grew as vibrant as the rose, 
Its tomb was as the shadow in its heart — - 
The paleness of the moon was in its veins — 
The long blue finger shadows of the eves 
Entwined its petals — soft as udder-dripped 
White milk, that when the sunset had decreased, 
Or that which in the hours of the dawn 
Is made libation with to humankind, 
When man doth bring the cattle from the field 
Of pasturage — Diaphanous, and beautified, and sheer. 
Almost a nothing — yet in that Divine ! 



312 



LINES 

HEART of my heart, I am free to thee, heart, 
Long since I spilt desires with the rose, 
And slept my sleep in poppies that depart 
With opiate repose 
Heart of my Heart ! 



I am free to thee now, come in, I welcome thee, 

The sun took all my fire in his cup, 

My tears were tangled with the evening sea 

Now they are drunken up 

I can forget and be. — 

Winds have my will, O sad girl beautiful! 
Springs have my pulses where their freshets run! 
My wings are in a body moth-skinned, dull, 
And as the butterfly's wait for the sun 
Heart of my Heart ! 



Come through the waste, whereon the eagle flies. 
And we will watch him as he soareth far! 
Within his nest the restless seagull lies. 
Within his placement now is every star, 
Come back, be wise ! 

313 



3^4 Lines 

Come back, O wonder of the land and seas! 
With hair that breathes the perfume of the moon, 
Or seems a wafting swarm of gold-backed bees, 
And lips half parted as horizoned noon — 
And shoulders white, as warm snow ecstacies. 



Come home, and lift and drift me, to mine own. 
For like the earth forgotten hearts that beat 
Salient, and strangely, in their undertone, 
Sweeter than when I sought for so much sweet, 
I lie upon thy bosom nor make moan ! 



The conquerage of stars long have I tried. 
And moulding earth's infrequent will of storm 
Have watched the deadly waters as they rise, 
And did the soul's insatiate wonder mourn. 
Come home — 



A GREEK LAMENT 

GODS! O 5''e gods of the ancients, have pity, great ye, on 
my weakness! 
Laden with weights of ReHgion, I lean toward Heroic Rebel- 
lion, 
Sacrifice surging, yet singing the funeral dirge to submission 
Leads her away to her bier, where together they both lie as 
buried. 

Gods! O ye gods of the ancients, have pity, great ye, on my 

weakness ! 
Scented with passions Earth culled, from Hesperides' gardens 

— desires. 
Hearts are like flame holly buds, dipped in sharp, frozen ice of 

December — 
Gods! O ye gods of the ancients, have pity, great ye, on my 

weakness ! 

Gods! O ye gods of the ancients, have pity, great ye, on my 

weakness! 
Losing the wings of my soul, I should fall like an Icarus 

drooping, 
Ocean heaves high with warm winds spread adrift on the 

breast of midheaven — 
Magnetised, dreaming herself to be lifted in starlight, and 

darkness. 

315 



3i6 A Greek Lament 

Dawn with her purple brush sunk in an amethyst cauldron of 

fire 
Paints to the eastward a sunrise, thin-skinned, as a tender 

Europa! 
Beyond her the scarce hidden form, of a sky-lipped Sunbeam, 

and Shadow, 
Brother and sister will wait by the couch of their mother 

Awakening. 

Noon with her sunbeams abreast on the waters ^gean, 
Waits for the call through the olive-lulled isle for the evening. 
Here on the steeps of Acropolis, waiting the voice of the 

midnight — 
Gods! O ye gods of the ancients, have pity great ye, on my 

weakness ! ' 



LINES 

LO! Love to bathe for thee thy tired, tired feet. 
I heard a low voice calling, "Awake, arise and be!" 
Then ere I could the water, in the sky's bowl pour sweet — 
My lonely eyes were opened — and I could see. 

But still I sang as ever, of thy tired, tired feet, 
I long no brow of marble, no cheek of blood to feel, 
No eyes to mine sequestered as this I still may meet. 
For I have come with balsam, to bathe thy tired feet! 

Thy tired, tired feet, what more can seem more real? 

Low round the far creation there falls the hearts that beat, 

But I, but I remember not, for I must fill my bowl — 

I wondered what to fill it from, and then I found control — 

To bathe thy tired feet. 

The air is soft as linen, the rose it fain would dry 

When round about its petals, the morning dews fall nigh — 

To make a softer linen, with sun my tears, I try. 

And weave them for thy feet — 

Thy tired, tired feet. 



317 



A DAWN SONG 

THE Dawn is up, she wakes the birds! 
The fairest dawn I ever knew — 
She does not wait for passionate words — 
For her small creatures sing to you ! 

The Dawn is up — the fragrant herds 
Of flowers drink the morn stream's dew! 
She does not need to wake the birds, 
Her silent blossoms sing to you ! 

The Dawn is up, and she is fair 
A lapis lazuli of blue ! 
My god alone the very air, 
Will sing to you! 



318 



NIRVANA 
A Ballade 

NIRVANA liveth in the thing that dies — 
Sleep is laden, full of life's desires 
And only earth goes desolate and hires 
Her live emotions from the silent skies. 
I read the future in the present's eyes 
Not there the halls of great Nirvana are 
But in the sunken past alone she lies 
She was the dust which fell from y ester's star! 

My heart no more for full cessation cries, 
I find her in the dead breaths of my sires, 
The future is loud-voiced and ever wise 
She sings her psalms, upon full stringed lyres. 
I see the light that falls from ancient spires, 
My soul there rests, no life is there to mar 
The wondrous calm that lucid naught inspires. 
She was the dust that fell from yester's star! 

Across the Styx to life, Death's oarsman plies 
The regal heaven, she herself attires 
In sound and beauty all which harmonize 
And into life forgetless, sleep aspires — 

319 



320 Nirvana 

But in the present still the past expires — 

There is the grave which knows not heaven's bar! 

Nirvana is the breath of ashen fires — 

She is the dust which fell from yester's star! 

ENVOY 

Let Babylon and Mirve pass in suspires — 
They leave upon the earth no stain, or scar; 
The regal heaven herself, in life attires, 
Nirvana is the dust from yester's star! 



IN MEMORIAM 

TO-NIGHT the violins around the world 
Played on by hands that seek to find joy keys 
Are touched with sadness down the four long strings- 
Known or unknown there conies the wail of wings, 
The resting bows unrosined send a plea, 
Silent they lie as if by music held, 
A funeral dirge adown all scarfed horns flings — 
Of mouth unimpelled breath, of murmurings. 
The North Sea to the North Sun tired sings. 
With musical complainings, heart-wrung felled. 
And Odin still and cold — cons immortalities, 
For Grieg is dead. 



It is no matter now Concertos lie 
On music stand, or closed in cabinets, 
The notes are weeping through the clarionets 
Of those Archangels who can never die. 
The eyes that read Norway's folk-songs are wet. 
The voices tuned to plaints grow husked and dry, 
And on each music lover's breast a sigh 
Proclaims that even breath, cannot forget 
One loved the lyric song who has passed by — 
For Grieg is dead. 

321 



32 2 In Memoriam 

King Haakon in his palace hears a wind, 
Charles Ninth receives one of his ancient breed, 
King of the Song of Battle, and of Seed, 
Round which the cradle of the North Seas tind ! 
To every honest, cottaged woman, blind, 
Doth come the waiting song, wherewith did bleed 
The breast of her, who sang Peer Gynt's soul rest- 
Of Ibsen's plaint harboured in his breast 
The words the searching melody did find ! 
For Grieg is dead. 

Weep golden sun, whose gold makes constant day, 
Weep midnight sun thy fragmentary child ! 
Sprinkle thy light where ashes are defiled 
And laid for an immortal son away ! 
Forests put on your robes of funeral grey 
And let the storm winds on the coast grow mild ! 
Let mariners a sound hear through the dark 
More piercing sad than Tristan's loud dismay — 
For Wagner's brother passes ! And ye hark 
Since nature's voice has now but surf and lark! 
For Grieg is dead. 

O purple hills of Norway thunder keep ! 
O statesmen of a growing Nation weep! — 
— Commercial progress, starts, empirical, 
And from the Norse gods lightning 'gins to fall, 
Invention fresh has set her hand on fire. 
But while the bugle dies in hut, and hall, 
No more the proclamation of the lyre! 
Revenge and joy are choked upon the pall — 



In Memoriam 323 

No voice victorious calls, where men aspire, 
And battle's tongue is mute within her ire — 
There is no heart that cries with heart of all ! 
For Grieg is dead. 

THE END 



StP 9 i^Ou 



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